ed! the flaming guard!
The volume open'd! open'd every heart!
A sunbeam pointing out each secret thought! 270
No patron! intercessor none! now past
The sweet, the clement, mediatorial hour!
For guilt no plea! to pain, no pause! no bound!
Inexorable, all! and all, extreme!
Nor man alone; the Foe of God and man,
From his dark den, blaspheming, drags his chain,
And rears his brazen front, with thunder scarr'd:
Receives his sentence, and begins his hell.
All vengeance past, now, seems abundant grace:
Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll 280
His baleful eyes! he curses whom he dreads;
And deems it the first moment of his fall.
'Tis present to my thought!--and yet where is it?
Angels can't tell me; angels cannot guess
The period; from created beings lock'd
In darkness. But the process, and the place,
Are less obscure; for these may man inquire.
Say, thou great close of human hopes and fears!
Great key of hearts! great finisher of fates!
Great end! and great beginning! say, Where art thou?
Art thou in time, or in eternity? 291
Nor in eternity, nor time, I find thee.
These, as two monarchs, on their borders meet,
(Monarchs of all elapsed, or unarrived!)
As in debate, how best their powers allied,
May swell the grandeur, or discharge the wrath,
Of Him, whom both their monarchies obey.
Time, this vast fabric for him built (and doom'd
With him to fall), now bursting o'er his head;
His lamp, the sun, extinguish'd; from beneath 300
The frown of hideous darkness, calls his sons
From their long slumber; from earth's heaving womb,
To second birth! contemporary throng!
Roused at one call, upstarted from one bed,
Press'd in one crowd, appall'd with one amaze,
He turns them o'er, Eternity! to thee.
Then (as a king deposed disdains to live)
He falls on his own scythe; nor falls alone:
His greatest foe falls with him; Time, and he
Who murder'd all Time's offspring, Death, expire. 310
Time was! Eternity now reigns alone:
Awful eternity! offended queen!
And her resentment to mankind, how just!
With kind intent, soliciting access,
How often has she knock'd at human hearts!
Rich to repay their hospitality;
How often call'd! and with the voice of God!
Yet bore repulse, excluded as a cheat!
A dream! while