 | Brother Fabian's Manuscript |  |
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THE FIFTEEN DAYS OF JUDGMENT.
“Then there shall be signs in Heaven.”—
Thus much in the text is given,
Worthy of the sinner's heeding:
But the other signs preceding
Earth's Last Judgment and destruction,
And its fiery reconstruction,
May be drawn from other channels;
For we read in Hebrew annals
That there shall be altogether
Fifteen Judgment days; but whether
Following or interpolated,
Jerome saith, is nowhere stated.
Thus much in the text is given,
Worthy of the sinner's heeding:
But the other signs preceding
Earth's Last Judgment and destruction,
And its fiery reconstruction,
May be drawn from other channels;
For we read in Hebrew annals
That there shall be altogether
Fifteen Judgment days; but whether
Following or interpolated,
Jerome saith, is nowhere stated.
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Day I.
On the first day, loud upcrashing,Shall the shoreless ocean, gnashing
With a dismal anaclysmal
Outrush from its deeps abysmal,
Lifted high by dread supernal,
Storm the mountain heights eternal!
Forty cubits of sheer edges,
Wall-like, o'er the summit-ridges
Stretching upright forth—a mirror
For the unutterable terror
Of the huddled howling nations,
Smit with sudden desolations,
Rushing hither, thither, drunken,
Half their pleasant realms sea-sunken!
Day II.
On the second day, down-pouring,Shall the watery walls drop roaring
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To the nethermost abysses,
With a horrible waterquaking
In the world-wide cataracts, shaking
Earth's foundations as they thunder
To the cavernous darkness under.—
Surf-plumed steeds of God Almighty,
Rock and pyramid, forest, city,
Through the flood-rent valleys scourging,
Wild in headlong ebb down-surging,
Down, till eye of man scarce reaches
Where, within its shrunken beaches,
Hidden from a world's amazement,
Cowers the Deep in self-abasement.
Day III.
On the third day, o'er the seethingOf the leprous ocean writhing,
Whale and dragon, orc and kraken,
And leviathan, forsaken
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To and fro shall plunge—the dreary
Dumb death-sickness of creation
Startling with their ululation.
Men shall hear the monsters bellow
Forth their burden, as they wallow;
But its drift?—Let none demand it!
God alone shall understand it!
Day IV.
On the fourth day, blazing redly,With a reek pitch-black and deadly,
A consuming flame shall quiver
From all seas and every river!
Every brook and beck and torrent
Leaping in a fiery current;
All the moats and meres and fountains
Lit, like beacons on the mountains;
Furnace-roar of smolten surges
Scaring earth's extremest verges!
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Day V.
On the fifth day, Judgment-stricken,Every green herb, from the lichen
To the cedar of the forest,
Shall sweat blood in anguish sorest!
On the same, all fowls of heaven
Into one wide field, fear-driven,
Shall assemble, cowed and shrinking,
Neither eating aught, nor drinking;
Kind with kind, all ranked by feather,
Doves with doves aghast together,
Swan with swan in downfal regal,
Wren with wren, with eagle, eagle!
Ah! when fowl feel such foreboding,
What shall be the Sinner's goading?
Day VI.
On the sixth day, through all nationsShall be quaking of foundations,
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All that all men builded crumbling
As the heel of Judgment tramples
Cot and palace, castles, temples,
Hall and minster, thorp and city;—
All men too aghast for pity
In the crashing and the crushing
Of that stony stream's downrushing!—
And a flame of fiery warning
Forth from sundown until morning
With a lurid coruscation
Shall reveal night's desolation!
Day VII.
On the seventh day, self-shattered,Rifting fourfold, scarred and scattered,
Pounded in the Judgment's mortars,
Every stone shall split in quarters!
Pebble, whinstone, granite sparry,
Rock and boulder—stones of quarry,
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Shivering, split athwart and under;
And the splinters, each on other,
Shall make war against his brother,
Each one grinding each to powder,
Grinding, gnashing, loud and louder,
Grinding, gnashing on till even,
With a dolorous plea to Heaven.
What the drift?—Let none demand it!
God alone shall understand it!
Day VIII.
On the eighth, in dire commotion,Shall the dry land heave like Ocean,
Puffed in hills and sucked in hollows,
Yawning into steep-down swallows—
Swelling, mountainously lifted,
Skyward from the plains uprifted—
With a universal clamour,
Rattling, roaring through the tremor;
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Grovel in a wild misgiving!—
What, O Sinner, shall avail your
Might in solid Earth's own failure?
Day IX.
On the ninth day all the mountainsShall drop bodily, like spent fountains,
All the cloud-capped pride of pristine
Peak and pinnacle amethystine
Toppling, drifting to the level,
Flooding all the dales with gravel;
One consummate moment blasting
All that seems so everlasting—
All men to the caves for shelter
Scurrying through the world-wide welter!
Day X.
on the tenth day, hither, thither,Herding from their holes together,
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Through the desolate wildernesses
Men shall o'er that mountain ruin
Run as from a Death's pursuing,—
Each one with suspicious scowling,
Shrinking from his fellow's howling—
For all human speech confounded
Shall not sound as once it sounded.
None shall understand his brother—
Mother child, nor child his mother!
Day XI.
On the eleventh day, at dawning,Every sepulchre wide yawning
At the approach of Earth's Assessor,
Shall upyield its white possessor;—
All the skeletons, close-serried,
O'er the graves where each lay buried,
Mute upstanding, white and bony,
With a dreadful ceremony
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Eastward for the Judge's coming;
Staring on, with sockets eyeless,
Each one motionless and cryless,
Save the dry, dead-leaf-like chattering,
Through that white-branched forest pattering.
What its drift?—Let none demand it!
God alone shall understand it!
Day XII.
On the twelfth, the Planets sevenAnd all stars shall drop from Heaven!
On the same day, scared and trembling,
All four-footed things assembling,
Each after his kind in order—
All the lions in one border,
Sheep with sheep—not needing shepherd—
Stag with stag—with leopard, leopard—
Shall be herded cowed and shrinking,
Neither eating aught, nor drinking,
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Howling, barking, roaring, squeaking;—
What the drift?—Let none demand it!
God alone shall understand it!
Day XIII.
On the thirteenth awful morningShall go forth the latest warning,
With a close to all things mortal,
For the Judge is at the portal!
In an agony superhuman,
Every living man and woman,
Child and dotard—every breather—
Shall lie down and die together,
That all flesh in death's subjection
May abide the Resurrection!
Day XIV.
On the fourteenth, morn to even,Fire shall feed on Earth and Heaven,
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Under earth, and on, and over;
All things ghostly, human, bestial,
In the crucible celestial
Tested by the dread purgation
Of that final conflagration;
Till the intolerable whiteness
Dawn, of God's exceeding brightness
Through the furnace-flame's erasure
Of yon mortal veil of azure!
Day XV.
Last, the fifteenth day shall renderEarth a more than earthly splendour,
Once again shall Word be given:
“Let there be new Earth, new Heaven!”
And this fleeting world—this charnel,
Purified, shall wax eternal!—
Then all souls shall Michael gather
At the footstool of the Father,
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All erst human saints; and scorners,
And without revenge or pity
Weigh them in the scales almighty!—
Sinner! Dost thou dread that trial?
Mark yon shadow on the dial!
Ast illi semper modò “cras, cras,” umbra
docebit.
Mark yon shadow on the dial!
EXPLICIT.
| Brother Fabian's Manuscript | |