THE
GOLDEN APOCALYPSE
Marvellous, behind our skies of night and sleep
Awaits the far golden epiphany
With all Its puissance of amazing thunder-sun,
The vast ultimate Noon of earth and time.
Gradual like a tremendous glacier of fire
It draws near the globe and all its temporal dusk;
Its steps are heard on distant burning peaks,
Its celestial strides echo in the winds of God.
Ever calm, victorious, eternal, free
Its regal Light labours ceaseless, alone
To build a path from Its pure altitude-spheres
To the clay's sense-drunk wave-tracks of nescient fall
So that It may irrevocably lean
From Its giant oceaned and peaked continents
And find a room in the vague cosmic gloam.
Each day Its miracle-presence unveils Its face
To summit-spirit's awakening vastnesses;
Each hour is a sudden revelation's stroke
That brings nearer the heart of eternity
To the nude and bleeding heart of the universe.
Each moment is a quick and wonder hymn
Whose cadence discloses the startling surprise of the
vast
To the soul's outstretched aspiration's fire-cry.
Behind and above all our transient moods
An undying reality awakes and lives
And motions our crude earthliness with elysian wings
Making our limbs and matter's hoary sleep
The deathless citadel for Its descent.
Soon the bell-stars from the cathedral-sky
Shall ring with epic resonance of light.
Soon the earth-heavens shall gleam with unchanging blaze
Of the imperial sun-presence of the King .
And He shall appear, the deathless bodied Noon
On the dusk-edge of fire-awakened earth
With glory and bliss and smiling omnipotence.
This shall be the last golden Apocalypse.
9-12-1952
