Мария Джейн Джюсбери (Maria Jane Jewsbury)

The Hour of Account

   And maidens singing,
   And warriors shouting in the field of strife.
                                  Anonymous.

IT was not to the trumpet's tone,
'Mid seraphs girt as foes,
And lightning-flash and earthquake-groan,
That this fair earth arose:
A viewless spirit stirred the deep,
One living word breathed o'er its sleep,
And nature from repose,
With radiant stream and flowery sod,
Awoke, the beautiful of God!
Far other sound, far other sign,
Than song from angel lyres,
Or beamings of the Love Divine,
Must be when earth expires!
Blackness and blood in upper air,
Below, all phantom-sights that scare,
Terror, and wrath, and fires;
And trumpet-tones so deep and dread.
There rest no sleepers, sleep no dead!
Forth from the prison-house they come,
Wearing their forms of life,
Solemn, and still, and cold, and dumb,
Yet fraught with inward strife:
Each bearing from his opened bier
His buried heart of guilt or fear,
And thoughts with conscience rife;
Each bound for judgment, and as guide,
The past, a spectre, by his side.
Eternal in their power and pain,
The memories once far fled,
Come crowding back upon the brain,
So lately cold and dead!
Written no more on earthly sand,
All living, fadeless, burning stand,
Life's evils done, and said
Till every single glance within,
Reapeth a harvest dire of sin!
Nation and tribe through ages fled,
Scattered as dust may be,
They come, a breathing host they tread,
Gathered from land and sea;
Many and mighty, yet all hushed,
The monarch by the slave he crushed,
The bondman by the free,
On, on, the living ocean rolls
Its billows of immortal souls!
On to the judgment. Some to meet
Their partings henceforth o'er,
And some before that severing seat
To part, and meet no more!
To judgment where no darkling thought
But into blazing light is brought;
And counsels hid before,
Dismantled of the mists of time
Reveal their character and crime!
'Tis past the one dread hour is past
Where is the rainbow-throne?
The crowd that heard the trumpet-blast?
The earth they called their own?
They are vanished like a cloud afar,
There looks not on them sun or star,
Spirits survive alone;
And they, beyond the world they trod;
Live in the smile or frown of GOD!