Philip James Bailey

Festus - 44

Man's final doom conceive: the award to all
Earth's tribes of souls by spirits elect, their chiefs
Saintly, themselves through purifying rule
Of chastening spheres, to proximate perfectness
Long trained; all rational hosts, by boundless love,
Brought round to service reasonable and just,
Of life's beneficent lord. A million minds
Fixed momently on him, and countless more,
In rest, act, sin or strife, all seen at once,
Show but as one to God, all man one soul.
Blessed, when in spiritual sacrament as now
All creature being, by God invited, taste
His infinite essence, who all life within,
Soul with soul pure communes. We glimpse the close;
And swiftlier than an angel's wings outpace
Time's plodding feet, things ripen unto their end.

The Judgment of Earth.
Son of Man, Archangel, Angels and Saints.
Archangel.  Let all the dead rejoice; their Saviour comes
With clouds of angels circled like a sun
Belted with light, and brighter than all light.
Lo, he descends and seats him on his throne;
Alighting like a new made sun in heaven.
The world awaits thee Lord! Rise, souls of men,
Buried beneath all ages from the first;
Numbered, unnumbered, rise ye; death, no more,
Hath power upon ye than the ravening sea
Upon the stars of heaven. Ye elements
Give back your stolen dead. He claimeth them
Whose they both were and are and e'er shall be.

Angel of Earth.  See! to wipe from his word
The dust of years,
He comes, he comes, the Lord,
Man--god, reappears;
To bless and to save
From death and the grave;
To redeem and deliver,
For ever and ever.

Son of Man.  I come to repay sin with holiness;
And death with immortality; man's soul
With God's spirit; yea, all evil with all good.
Ye angels, ye elect, who with God's love
Informed, shall rule with me o'er life, assume
Your seats of judgment. Judge ye all in love,
The love which God the all--father hath to you.

Saints.  First--born of deity, judge ye, saidst thou. Be
Our Judge, Lord! Teach us others how to judge.

Son of Man.  Our father, heaven's supreme, the all--perfect one
Hath me, the Son, born of humanity, filled
With the spirit divine, and so of mercy and grace.
Thus judge ye, God in you all judging; soul
By soul before ye brought to cleansing pains
Of self reproach consigned for all offence
Conscious 'gainst God and man, ye so shall train
By precept and example 'like divine,
As shall all lowlier nature raise to sense
Worthier of being, as pure and true to God,
And fruitful sole of good; from sphere to sphere,
Of every virtue, thus refined, and raised,
Ye saints of choice with all ye rule, and serve,
One vast equality so attained of bliss,
With me shall enter heaven.

Saints. Be it where God will;
But now we render back to thee the love
Which is thine own, none else is worthy thee.
Who shall commemorate all thy chosen names
Friend, servant, brother, joint--heir, owner, lord,
Priest, advocate, physician, teacher, guide:
Prime essence, virtue of all excellence?

Son of Man.  Whate'er the sign, the emblem, chartered law,
Treaty or covenant, man in ages passed
Hath boasted, of the spirit that should redeem
From sin and ignorance, idols many and foul,
His spirit to purify and lead to enjoy
Visions of peace triumphant, glory and power;
Know all are symbols only of truth; and know
To creature thought, God in his wholeness seems
Inestimable; and these conceived him best
Partwise, as acting through main energies,
Sevenfold, or trebly substanced, increate
Aspects of being; but illusory; those,
With more or less of majesty, as a cloud
Sun--gilded, of the storm's tempestuous breath,
Shows nobler than the minimous gust man's lips
Force on air frore; so, more than all things God;
All spirit, all substance, manifest or concealed.
God know ye one pure spirit, and self--outrayed
In infinite forms, instinct with deity, each
Which time by time, to its central source returns
Its end, its reason sole; intelligences,
Angels all, sons of God, to him, of all
Created, spirit and matter, sire and sum;
For as in man's breath congealed, cross, starlet, flower
Sphere crystalline, form, so into life all being,
Harmonious and symmetric, God imbreathes.
Behold, this day I dwell with ye on earth,
Time doling for the accomplishment of things,
Judicial, curative, rewardful; lawed
Even to the last. The next shall be in heaven,
Where ye shall meet the all--father, and remain
In the eternal presence; the all in one,
The sole true being of the universe.

Saints.  Dear Lord, our sire and saviour, for thy gifts,
The world were poor in thanks, though every soul
Should nought but breathe them; every blade of grass,
Yea every atomie of the earth and air
Thanks utter like to dew. Thy ways are plain
Only in thine own light. And this great day,
By one unfolded with thy spirit replete,
Unveils all nature's laws and miracles
All to thee all as one. Thy judgment all
Wise mercy, Lord of love, the world's no more
Illegible; all is bright as new--born star.
All men have sinned; but not a single soul
Less than the countless all can satisfy
The ultimate triumph which to us belongs
Who in mortality strove, and won; or failed
As these, the unnumbered, till death after. See!

Son of Man.  The book of life is opened. Heaven begins.