Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE FIFTEEN DAYS OF JUDGEMENT, by SEBASTIAN EVANS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE FIFTEEN DAYS OF JUDGEMENT, by                    
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 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
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 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 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 boulder—stones 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 sheep—not needing shepherd—
Stag with stag—with 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 dotard—every 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 world—this 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!





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