The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

Most awful booms that word
Rolling its cadence deep,
Till the roused heart is inly stirr'd
From out its iron sleep,
When God “repents” He e'er created man,
Since like one giant sin, the earth to ruin ran!

Can mortal accent tell
How heaves th' Eternal Mind,
When these divine emotions swell,
Commoved by human kind,—
“With man My Spirit shall not always strive,
For it repents Me now, that such I made alive?”

In this the harvest see
By Adam's sin first sown!
All vices reign, all virtues flee,
And from His watching Throne
When scans the Godhead our apostate race,
No hallow'd feature there can His omniscience trace.

For not one thrill of thought
Which plays within the soul
That is not with rebellion fraught,
Now sin hath seized the whole
Our flesh and spirit, heart and will include,
With utter hate of God, and dread ingratitude!

Evil, and nothing more,
Behold, man's nature now:—
Blest Angels! did ye not deplore,
When Earth her wither'd brow
Lifted beneath you, in yon spheres of light,
And show'd her branded front, of old so pure and bright?

But, lo! the hour of wrath,
Commission'd from above,
Stern vengeance o'er the sinners' path,
With whom the Spirit strove,
Shall roll in ruin; and the godless world
See thunderbolts of death from His fierce anger hurl'd!

Insect, and man, and beast,
Whatever lives and moves,
The lofty sinner, and the least
Who madly crime approves,—
The broken fountains of the deep shall burst,
And sweep them into gloom, like things by God accurst!

And is the record dead,
Which here unveils to man
The ruin early vice had bred,
When lawless will began
Reason and Conscience both at once to sway,
Till, like embosom'd fiends, bad passions had their play?

No! judgment never dies,
But lives as long as sin
The law of love and truth defies,
And renders Man within
A jarring discord, out of tune with heaven,
A wreck of sinful woe, by darkest vices driven.

Go, Rebel! take thy stand
On some steep rock, which frown'd
In fearful gloom above the land
By God's vast deluge drown'd,—
As if thou heard'st the desolating roar
Of billows when they lash'd th' uncoffin'd dead they bore,

And there, let Conscience learn
A lesson for all time,—
That God must aye with anger burn
O'er unrepenting crime:
He cannot, will not, on the sinner look,
Until the weeping Heart hath guilt for grace forsook.

Come, then, celestial Grace!
Like dew of Hermon steal
O'er the dry souls of our sad race,
Until they pray and feel;
That so Thy Spirit, when He plies His love,
May not, by us aggrieved, return to Thee above.

For His deep coming, watch
With list'ning heart of prayer!
And ever lift the inward latch
That yields him entrance there;
So less and less His strivings will be known,
And God's bright Spirit seem commingled with our own.

Then, like a temple built
By some celestial Hand,
No more shall gloom and dreadless guilt
Benignant grace withstand,
But each pure Soul a living shrine will be,
Where Angels view enthroned the awful Trinity.