University of Virginia Library

THE DEATH OF TIME.

Listen! what mysterious sounds are those
That roll through heaven?—what melodious songs!
And why that glorious song of ocean, where
The heavens are mirrored back upon his waste?
It is the mighty minstrelsy of storms
Borne on the rustlings of an angel's wings!
And what is that bright image in the sun?
An angel fondling with the locks of Christ!
For, lo! from out the confines of the sky,
A Tragedy of most celestial light,
Whose Acts were written by the hands of God,
And whose eventful scenes were laid in heaven,
And where the Dramatist, that now appears
In the last Act, was born—bursts forth in floods
Of glory on the soul! For now it seems
As if the words were syllabled in stars
Of living light, bathed in the hues of heaven!
For in the fifth Act, when the Lord of life
And glory shall appear, arrayed in robes
Of righteousness, with one foot on the neck
Of Death, the other on the mouth of hell,
And drawn by steeds of lightning down the aisles
Of constellated glory—there shall come
Ten thousand whirlwinds from the sea of God!
And with the mighty eloquence of winds,
That sweep the wild illimitable waste
Of unfenced prairie, where the exiled tones
Of ocean gather up in prayer to God;
And where the grisly darkness of the woods
Sends out the tempests to the azure hills,
And from the frowning solitudes are torn
The sinuous tendons of the giant oaks—
Shall join the hallelujah of the storms,
And hail, with one celestial waft of joy,
The embrace of the nations! And the caves
Of mighty mountains, whose sky-cleaving heads
Are crowned with everlasting snows, shall wave
Their land-tones over ocean, like the shell,
Whose deep celestial melody shall fly
To meet the organ of Eternity,
And roll the waves of thunder into heaven!
And now the Lord of glory raised on high,
With right hand lifted half way into heaven—
Grasping twice ten thousand thunders in his fists,
And sounding like the crush of falling worlds—
Commands the sun to stop his course and die!
Time is appalled! the moon is struck with fear!
And palsy rains decrepitude on earth!
For, faithful to his summons, he prepares,
With all his rich magnificence of stars,
And with his glorious pageantry of spheres,
To see the mighty martyrdom of Death!
And at the funeral of the corpse of Time,
Behold the angels dig his grave in chaos!
And now from out his lifted hand on high,
Down—down—the seven-bolted thunder falls!
And from the adamantine gates of hell
Tears the rude bars asunder—while, anon,
The Devil, from his confines, drags from out
The fiery fingers of the fiends of hell
The clanking chains of vengeance, newly forged,
And on the rusty heels that trod the graves
Of empires, sets the everlasting seal
Of Destiny that never shall be loosed!
And now the mighty organ of the sea
Takes up the requiem of the falling stars!
A mournful anthem comes from out the moon!
For she has found her grave-clothes in the clouds!
And frightened at the widowhood of earth,
She wanders blindfold from her wonted path,
And, wailing for her ocean-lord, she puts
On sackcloth for the dying sun, and sets
Behind Eternity to rise no more!
And now, with mandates louder than the shout
Of congregated Angels when they sang
The advent of the dawn of Time, and tolled
The requiem of his demise on the stars—
The voice of Christ goes forth among the dead,
With tidings that shall be remembered when
Eternity shall be no more—Arise!
And quick to live as was the sun to die,
The buried nations of the universe
Threw off the dusted winding sheet of death,
And from the sepulchre that coffins Time,
Stood up erect in attitude divine,
And saw the radiance of the smiles of God!
And now old ocean, frozen at the voice
That shook effulgence from the sun, yields up
The dead that lay within him—for his waves
Were crystalled into darkness by the night
That wrapped the universe in gloom, and wove
The murky shroud that sepulchred the sun—
And breathless as the silence that lay couched
Upon his bosom, tombes the songless spheres!
For down into that everlasting sea,
Ten thousand, thousand fathoms deep, they sank
Beneath the thunders of Messiah's voice!
And those that slept within the coral caves,
And braved the pantings of that mighty sea;
And those that slept upon his briny couch,
And folded in the drapery of his waves;
And those long cradled on his locks of age,
That dreamed amid the shell-tones of that Day—
Arose in lineaments divine, and heard
The glorious shoutings of the host of God!
And far beyond that sea—behind the hills
Of darkness—where the sun had gone to rest—
And where the confines of primeval night
Gave forth creation—where the grave of Time
Was dug by Angels—there the heavens were seen!
And now redeemed from mortal death to life!
And from the wages of that dreamless sleep!
And from the bony embrace of the dead!
And roused from out the Dædal couch of clay,
By that delightful summons—they go forth!
And robed in that excessive light which tore
The veil of hell's impenetrable gloom,
To scan the hills of Immortality—
And from the shackles of perpetual night,
Throned on the highest hills of God—they see
The shoreless ocean of Eternity!
And from the lawny isles that skirt the waves
Of vale-meandering streams that gush along
In pleasant journeyings to the sea of life—
They pluck the luscious clusters—and from groves
That float on frankincense, they take their harps—
And on the greensward by the hills of heaven,
That look upon the Sharon of the Lamb—
They gather up an ocean of sweet sound;
And while they strike the interludes of joy,
Fill up the embrace of perpetual love.
But never, while Eternity shall roll
To mock the grandeur of creation, shall
The thunders of dissolving Nature preach
The funeral of the death of Time—nor hail
Again the resurrection of the just.