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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE FIFTEEN DAYS OF JUDGEMENT, by SEBASTIAN EVANS First Line: Then there shall be signs in heaven Last Line: Mark yon shadow on the dial! Subject(s): God; Heaven; Judgment Day; Ruins; Storms; Paradise; End Of The World; Doomsday; Fall Of Man | |||
"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 Judgement and destruction, And its fiery reconstruction, May be drawn from other channels; For we read in Hebrew annals That there shall be altogether Fifteen Judgement days; but whether Following or interpolated, Jerome saith, is nowhere stated. 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 fortha 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 From the ruinous precipices To the nethermost abysses, With a horrible waterquaking In the world-wide cataracts, shaking Earth's foundations as they thunder. Surf-plumed steeds of God Almighty, Rock and pyramid, forest, city, Through the flood-rent valleys scourging, Wide 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 seething Of the leprous ocean writhing, Whale and dragon, orc and kraken, And leviathan, forsaken His unfathomable eyrie, To and fro shall plungethe 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 fire shall quiver From all seas and every river! Every brook and beck and torrent Leaping in fiery current; All the moats and meres and fountains Lit, like beacons on the mountains; Furnace-roar of smolten surges Scarring earth's extremest verges! DAY V On the fifth day, Judgement-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 downfall regal, Wren and 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 nations Shall be quaking of foundations, With a horrible hollow rumbling All that all men builded crumbling As the heel of Judgement tramples Cot and palace, castles, temples, Hall and minster, thorpe 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 Judgement's mortars, Every stone shall split in quarters! Pebble, whinstone, granite sparry, Rock and boulderstones of quarry, Shaped or shapeless, all asunder 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; While, flung headlong, all men living 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 mountains Shall 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, With a glaring of white faces, 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 Staring from the morn till gloaming 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 seven And 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 sheepnot needing shepherd Stag with stagwith leopard, leopard Shall be herded cowed and shrinking, Neither eating aught, nor drinking, But to Godward bellowing, shrieking, Howling, barking, roaring, squeaking; What the drift? Let none demand it! God alone shall understand it. DAY XIII On the thirteenth awful morning Shall 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 dotardevery breather Shall lie down and die together, That all flesh in death's subjection Shall abide the Resurrection! DAY XIV On the fourteenth, morn to even, Fire shall feed on Earth and Heaven, Though the skies and all they cover, Under earth, and on, and over; All things ghostly, human, bestial, In the crucible celestial Tested by the dread purgation On that final conflagration; Till the intolerable whiteness Dawn, of God's exceeding brightness Through the furnace-flames erasure Of yon mortal veil of azure! DAY XV Last, the fifteenth day shall render Earth a more than earthly splendour, Once again shall Word be given: "Let there be new Earth, new Heaven!" And this fleeting worldthis charnel, Purified, shall wax eternal! Then all souls shall Michael gather At the footstool of the Father, Summoning from Earth's four corners, 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! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON ETHNIC DEFINITIONS by ELEANOR WILNER THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL by WILLIAM BLAKE THE END OF THE WORLD by GORDON BOTTOMLEY |
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