ostles stretch forth their hands beseechingly for the poor human race.
The dead raise the gravestones under which they have lain; blessed
spirits adoring, float upward to God, while the abyss seizes its
victims. Here one of the ascending spirits seeks to save his condemned
brother, whom the abyss already embraces in its snaky folds. The
children of despair strike their clenched fists upon their brows, and
sink into the depths! In bold foreshortenings, float and tumble whole
legions between heaven and earth. The sympathy of the angels, the
expression of lovers who meet, the child that at the sound of the
trumpet clings to the mother's breast, are so natural and beautiful
that one believes one's self to be among those who are waiting for
judgment. Michael Angelo has expressed in colors what Dante saw and has
sung to the generations of the earth.

The descending sun at that moment threw his last beams in through the
uppermost window. Christ, and the blessed around him, were strongly
lighted up; while the lower part, where the dead arose, and the demons
thrust their boat laden with the damned from the shore, were almost
in darkness.

Just as the sun went down the last lesson was ended, the last light
which now remained was extinguished, and the whole picture world
vanished in the gloom from before me; but in that same moment burst
forth music and singing. That which color had bodily revealed arose now
in sound; the day of judgment, with its despair and its exultation,
resounded above us.

The father of the church, stripped of his papal pomp, stood before the
altar, and prayed to the holy cross; and upon the wings of the trumpet
resounded the trembling choir, 'Populus meus quid feci tibi?' Soft
angel-tones rose above the deep song, tones which ascended not from a
human breast: it was not a man's nor a woman's; it belonged to the world
of spirits; it was like the weeping of angels dissolved in melody.

ANEURIN

(Sixth Century A.D.)

Among the triad of singers--Llywarch, prince and bard, Aneurin, warrior
and bard, and Taliessin, bard only--who were among the followers of the
heroic British chief Urien, when he bravely but unsuccessfully resisted
the invasion of the victorious Angles and Saxons, Aneurin was famous
both as poet and warrior. He sang of the long struggle that eventually
was to turn Briton into England, and celebrated in his 'Gododin' ninety
of the fallen Cymric chiefs. The notes of his life are scan