University of Virginia Library

THE BOOKS OF ETERNITY.

The Books were carried
To the Judge, who sat
High on the throne of thought, and worlds thereat
In silent session tarried;
I in fear
Stood far apart and to the extreme edge
Clung, while an unshed tear
A moment blotted out the awful sight
Of nations quivering like the breeze-blown sedge
In arrows of intolerable Light.
Unsaid confession
Trembled on the lips of all,
Who owned transgression
And bowed beneath the shadow of the fall.
Not one
Dared to uplift the burden of a plea,
But with the murmur of a troubled sea
The peoples knew the fate foredone.
The Book of Life was opened, and I saw
The law
Written therein with fire and burning truth
And love's eternal youth,
While in the solemn thunder
Of each line
I felt the beating of the Heart Divine,
Which all its blessed mist would burst asunder.
Then the Book of Remembrance was unsealed,
And I
A little yet more nigh
Drew, for the doom to be revealed.
The hush fell calm and cruel
On my mind,
Strained unto hope and yet resign'd
To utmost wrath. Was I a jewel
Recorded there, if but a casual blot,
Or not?
And then another tear
Clouded my eyes,
And in the dimness I stept still more near
The white seat of all the eternities,
Uuder the blinding curtain
Of my grief,
Which with a foot uncertain
Sought relief.
Lo, as in ages,
One by one the pages
Were turned, in that great dreadful judgment shine;
I read the names of friends and brothers
And of others,
But amid the thousands where was mine?
O some were sadly blurred, and some were stains,
And all had blighted been with sin,
While many struggled forth by bitter pains,
But yet they were within.
I looked and trembled,
And a hunted cry
Of stricken woe and supreme agony
Brake from my tossing bosom undissembled;
And then a tortured tear,
Right from my very heart,
Rushed to the eyes of darkness and despair
Which scarce Omnipotence could now repair;
I took another step more bold, more near,
No longer self-exiled and all apart.
And there I read
As risen from out the dead,
In small and feeble letters but of flame,
Like that which glows in sacred shrines,
On the last page, between the closing lines,
My name.