The last judgment.

The Lord, the Sovereign, sends his summons forth,
Calls the south nations and awakes the north;
From east to west the sounding orders spread,
Through distant worlds and regions of the dead:
No more shall atheists mock his long delay;
His vengeance sleeps no more: behold the day!

Behold, the Judge descends, his guards are nigh;
Tempest and fire attend him down the sky:
Heav'n, earth, and hell, draw near; let all things come
To hear his justice, and the sinner's doom:
"But gather first my saints," the Judge commands,

Universal praise to God.

Loud hallelujahs to the Lord,
From distant worlds where creatures dwell;
Let heav'n begin the solemn word,
And sound it dreadful down to hell.

The Lord, how absolute he reigns!
Let every angel bend the knee;
Sing of his love in heav'nly strains,
And speak how fierce his terrors be.

High on a throne his glories dwell,
An awful throne of shining bliss;
Fly through the world, O sun! and tell
How dark thy beams compared to his.

Awake, ye tempests, and his fame

Divine protection.

Up to the hills I lift mine eyes,
Th' eternal hills beyond the skies;
Thence all her help my soul derives;
There my Almighty refuge lives.

He lives; the everlasting God,
That built the world, that spread the flood;
The heav'ns with all their hosts he made,
And the dark regions of the dead.

He guides our feet, he guards our way;
His morning smiles bless all the day;
He spreads the evening veil, and keeps
The silent hours while Isr'el sleeps.

Isr'el, a name divinely blest,

God loves the righteous and hates the wicked.

My refuge is the God of love;
Why do my foes insult and cry,
"Fly like a tim'rous, trembling dove,
To distant woods or mountains fly?"

If government be all destroyed,
(That firm foundation of our peace,)
And violence make justice void,
Where shall the righteous seek redress?

The Lord in heav'n has fixed his throne,
His eye surveys the world below:
To him all mortal things are known,
His eyelids search our spirits through.

If he afflicts his saints so far,

Aug. 14. 1653.
Upon The Words Of Chush The Benjamite Against Him.


Lord my God to thee I flie
Save me and secure me under
Thy protection while I crie
Least as a Lion (and no wonder)
He hast to tear my Soul asunder
Tearing and no rescue nigh.

Lord my God if I have thought
Or done this, if wickedness
Be in my hands, if I have wrought
Ill to him that meant me peace,
Or to him have render'd less,
And fre'd my foe for naught;

Let th'enemy pursue my soul

Done Aug. 8. 1653. Terzetti.


Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the Nations
Muse a vain thing, the Kings of th'earth upstand
With power, and Princes in their Congregations
Lay deep their plots together through each Land,
Against the Lord and his Messiah dear.
Let us break off; say they, by strength of hand
Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,
Their twisted cords: he who in Heaven doth dwell
Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them, then severe
Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell

It is a light, that the wind has extinguished.
It is a pub on the heath, that a drunk departs in the afternoon.
It is a vineyard, charred and black with holes full of spiders.
It is a space, that they have white-limed with milk.
The madman has died. It is a South Sea island,
Receiving the Sun-God. One makes the drums roar.
The men perform warlike dances.
The women sway their hips in creeping vines and fire-flowers,
Whenever the ocean sings. O our lost Paradise.

The nymphs have departed the golden woods.

O Sacred Providence, who from end to end
Strongly and sweetly movest! shall I write,
And not of thee, through whom my fingers bend
To hold my quill? shall they not do thee right?

Of all the creatures both in sea and land
Onely to Man thou hast made known thy wayes,
And put the penne alone into his hand,
And made him Secretarie of thy praise.

Beasts fain would sing; birds dittie to their notes;
Trees would be tuning on their native lute
To thy renown: but all their hands and throats
Are brought to Man, while they are lame and mute.

Horace: Book III, Ode 3

"Carminis interea nostri redæmus in orbem---"


Let us return, then, for a time,
To our accustomed round of rhyme;
And let my songs' familiar art
Not fail to move my lady's heart.

They say that Orpheus with his lute
Had power to tame the wildest brute;
That "Vatiations on a Theme"
Of his would stay the swiftest stream.

They say that by the minstrel's song
Cithæron's rocks were moved along
To Thebes, where, as you may recall,
They formed themselves to frame a wall.

Earth is rocking in space!
And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar,
And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face,
And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round--
And the blasts of the winds universal leap free
And blow each other upon each, with a passion of sound,
And æther goes mingling in storm with the sea!
Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread,
From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along!
O my mother's fair glory! O Æther, enringing
All eyes with the sweet common light of thy bringing,