A Prayer
Chapter 1
The pleading of one wearie in the Earth; a prayer to Christ, a prayer His mercy is too long;
The appeal of one whose breath faints in his chest, whose bones ache dully with the ancient tiredness of all things,
That the end may hasten, & the saved be saved, & this world pass urgently away.
Not the wretchedness of an hour has brought my spirit so low again into the familiar gloome;
No nor the loneliness of weeks has bent it so lowlie, but the mournful years, the tiresome years & decades have done it.
Let my prayer be the fruit of all my being Lord;
I hold it out to you in both hands, that has ripend in me three & thirtie years, Great Father God, & it is ripe;
The somber flower of my youth has put forth a bitter fruit, in the ripeness of my age.
Accept it from me Lord; & if it please You God may You do this thing, to accomplish it as it is written here;
Not that a worthless man should urge the doing of the Lord, but that I may have written it in beautiful accordance with Your perfect will, & by the prodding of the Spirit.
Add me not to the plagues and the curses of John, if I pray wrongly,
But Forgive, O Christ, and set me still among the number of the blesst that shall sit upon the New Earth,
Where I shall never be without your Presence; where I shall also sit beside Job, & ask of him.
Guide me then Father as I write it; & may it be to the uttermost good of your saints and your holy ones, which are stoopt with their living in the world;
Your sons which have wasted up their strength, and Your daughters which have eaten long the bitter apples of Despaire.
Unstop the channels of your fury at last; you see the masses bent toward evils unimagind since the foundation of the Erthe;
You see the people are tired, & that old Dragon strutts his bulk so openlie.
Our hearts are set every one to its own evil desire, & there are none that look to God;
There is no Hand but Yours that may stop us.
I know that You do hear me Lord, I know that I speak truly, that I ask proper things;
See the weariness of the people! They dissolve all into madness, they are self-murderd thousands every day.
The ruiners of the Earth get profit; they eat up all the land, & the poor find no rest.
Do You truly hear the crying out of the poor? Why do You abide it so long, when all the upright together beg that the world should be crumpled up and ruind?
Send the last salvation Father, shower the land with wide consuming fire, that we may watch it & shudder;
Lord come soon, that we may understand it, & rejoice.
Chapter 2
Behold: a wild man building in the wilderness; at the ends of the Earth, in the ocean mists he shall build a rough church.
His beard is long; his meat is berries & flesh, he toils freelie to keep the cold out, sawing & hammering, coarsely toiling.
He paints the walls with a dye of berries; he makes images of creatures and angels, & he stains the walls with verses of songs:
Come Lord, and may the Judgement start,
When man must taste the apple of his heart.
The light enters from small high windows; & the man shall build it three summers tirelesslie laboring.
He builds it where the birch trees crawl their stunted boughs along against the Earth, away from the wild ocean's fearsome gales;
They crawl as if they would escape the soil of their rootings.
So also shall the great portion of men stand before the Throne, striving to escape the Lord's voice; but their feet shall not shuffle;
Their feet shall obey the command of God, warp and twist though they may the sinews of their bodies.
He makes it a comfortable place for the Lord, with a bed where the Lord may lay His body down to rest, if so He should have need—
That dear meek Christ should not come again & find for Himself no place on the Earthe, but should certainly have a bed to sleep in, though it be ever so far away.
He shall be one filled with the Spirit of God; with wisdom & understanding, & with great knowledge in all manner of workmanship.
Of wood he shall build the house; with three domes upon the roof, every one bearing a tall cross, & of one size;
And he shall make seventy-seven smaller domes, each of one size;
And having no precious things with which to devise any cunning work, neither having any gold to overlay them with,
Nor having any silver, nor any brass with which to hammer out beauteous shapes, or to apply the bright leafe to the many domes;
Nor having of copper to set their rondures in, to gluster aloft the long polar days;
But he shall rather content himself with the raw wood of the domes, or paste the thin sheets of birchbark to their slopes;
And he shall cut from the wood small cretures also, to adorn all the roof, and the eaves, and every part of the house;
He shall carve out myriads of creatures, and no two of them the same, in accourdance with the old tradition.
And he shall carve a great showboard to set in the fore of the house, which says that THIS IS THE HOUSE OF THE LORD FOR THE DAYS OF JUDGEMENT,
And all defilers thereof shall eat their own doom.
And that man shall fast & pray, daily & nightly, & he shall be unshaven, with his hair unshorn, & he shall have a quiet spirit.
Now on a day when he may think of nothing further to be done with it, but seeing it completed to the satisfaxion of his own mind, & pleased with the noble creation,
On that day the Lord will also peer over it from His Infinence, & be pleased with it also;
For few hearts are there as humble & as bold, as to say to the God of the Universe: I have built Thee Lord a house to rest in; come again, & rest in it.
The Lord will surely bless such a man.
Then as he prayd on his face & hallowd the crude church, which lookt as wild as it had sprung up of itself out of the soil of the Earth;
And as he sorrowd that he had not considerd anything beyond the building of it; that he had built it, and knew not what to do with it now;
And as the man blesst it to whatever use the Creator may think fit, even if it be to rot in the wilderness forgotten,
Then suddenlie the domes they twisted somewhat, & they rose up, as the wood were living, & they bowd—
And with a little thundering noise they burste, as buds of roses burste, & open with a sweet smell, & deep color,
For a joy to the eyes, & for a place to rest the wearie pupils, that wander unceasingly,
And for the sustenance of Bees & other creeping things that fly, or even of Birds to sip the nectar with their long mouths.
Now likewise there came one Creature with a long long mouth, and with his limbs arraid to the Perplexion of the Mind, for his body was not like any living creature on the Earthe.
On wide wing he fluttred down to drink of the nectaries, & he gathred also the pollen; & a host of others like him followd behind, as Bees.
But when they had drunken their fill, & gone away, & the drone of their heavie wings had gone away over the horizon, the wide & waste land was again silent:
And the wild man prayd on his face, & fed his heart many nights on the vision he had seene; & he fasted for three days.
Chapter 3
Now a new thing shall happen on the Earthe; the manner of which has not yet been visited on the Earth's inhabitants;
For the Hand of the Lord shall work a new work upon it, upon the whole face of the world.
This I beg of you Lord, in my flesh to BEHOLD THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIRSTSPRING, & the April of the ages of the Earth come at last;
To witness, of the stones that upon the stones are piled, & the bricks that to bricks are mortard, how they suddenlie take it into their thoughts to creepe, & to spil forthe.
Look past your windows, you rushers in the citties; rouse, you sleepers, pull the curtains aside; you have forgotten Him, but He shall remind your hearts.
With a strange work He shall recall; He will quiet each of the great cities, that once roard at all hours, as the falling stremes of the Niagara continuallie roar;
This one famed of all the world, heap of twentie millions of souls, Behold your rigid streetes, shatterd by the blooming of the churches therein!
Deep in the belly a man will shudder, & his own bones will seem cold; A woman will sit with her groaning, & not understand the vision.
Weepe, you goers, you tireless of the city; weepe, & slow your feet from the scurrying.
As the roots of trees upend the road, & unroll the paves; & as they crack the fundaments of a home, or make them crumble, & open a pit in their profounds;
So the Churches of the Lord stretch their rootings in the Erthe; as the feete of hawks yearch into the hare's flesh, so the feete of the Churches of the Lord into Manhattan.
They clutch, & lifft themselves up, they lift their necks to burst a new flora, which was never seen in Nature.
Watch them, you vext people, you unnumberd— watch them, & marvel that your frozen hearts move not; that you see with your eyes, but your hearts are blind.
Tremble, all, & wonder, that you care not for the Lord's fresh work, & that which he makes new with a lively hand;
That which already is, a man looks upon & is comfortable with; for so it has been;
But the New, the living Creation that God goes on creating, they cause a man to stumble; like Pharaoh, that could see but never understand;
Now the streets are rubbled, & the structures tosst, the built things stoopt or crooked, & many there are that perish therein—
But every mind is sluggish: they do not understand.
But the Lord will show forth his boundless Creation; the Holy One will take up his tools again.
The pits open into darknes, where the Earthe is moved overmuch; walkers fall into them, some silent, & some with a loud crye.
Here & here whole structures tumble into the gape; a man that sleeps long is plunged in his bed & blankets down, down to the demise; from the lesser to the greater sleepe he passes, & scarcely knows it.
The heel of a woman slips, & she is no more; her dog goes down beside her, & no sound comes back up from that blank:
FOR EVERY SPIRE SHALL SPROUT THE LEAF, & BRING FORTH BUDS AS THE BOUGH, & all the pinnacles shall burst like unbound gardens that the gardener has forgotten.
Every crocket shall be as a spray of cherry, every finial the wild sprout of no Nature, but of His Pure Mind & His Own Happie Will, & never two are the same on all the Earth.
His new Creation is a destructive one; for the world is crampt with all Man's crampings—so His new Creation is a destructive one, for there is no space left for the work of His Greater Hand.
But no stone crumbles from the church walls, tho' they deviate their rooms; & tho' they sprout them towers, yet no glass shatters;
But from the nearby structures all things crumble, as an Earthquake had judderd all with power;
All the wearinesses of the brickmen go to duste, & all the moilings of the masons lie in ruin.
Rejoice, O watcher; Leape, & Rejoice: for who has seen these things before, or who shall ever see them again?
Which eyes have seen the like, since the great miracles of past ages, from before man was alive on the face of the Earth?
You crusht, rejoice; you maimd, you perisht under crumpled steel & stone, Rejoice! for the Lord has done it.
Chapter 4
Detroit O my belovd; my once-great city, once most prosperous in the Earth for manufacturie; where now are your mighty factories?
Are they these, that sit windowless & lost, these that the dust gathers in?
Where are the sons of your great ones? Is this one of them, that walks slowlie in the emptie roads, as through a wilderness?
The coyote creeps along behind him, at a distance;
The coyote creeps into the fallen houses to lay his head, the glad fellow;
For the animals go freelie, & there is no shortage of rabbit for the coyote's appetite.
In the night a stoopt house sinks & falls, & none have heard it; a strong wind brought it down, & only the tonsured rim of the roof remains.
Ripe city, what a harvest you will make!
The Lord has plannd it from before He set the Earth's foundation stones;
Blesst, most highly blesst are all that were born to see it with living eyes.
The churches pour out to the sky, that sat their decades choakt with weeds, & swallowd up to the eaves by the vines;
They bloom where no eyes notice; their pollen is gatherd by the gatherers of it; & there are no watchers, nor any that hear.
Up from the bottom of the world the creatures dig them up; they leave emptie acres in the ground, & set their drowsie chins on the grass—
The olden creatures, that the Lord put away in ancient time;
Some massie, with a thunderous foot, as huge Behemoth that loves the awfull sounds of ruine;
Some sleekit, as that crepte along the clay before mankind had yet been formd of it; they ruled the whole land tyrannouslie, before Man was given the dominion.
With heavie horns, & teeath that swarm the jaws, & their forms as they had been rear'd rather at the bottom of the Ocean deeps, where no sun reaches even faintly.
But they shall sit obediently, with pacience, waiting for the command of the King of Kings; they drowse beside the factories as the dog awaits his master.
Cry out, cry out with joy to see it, you inhabitants of this urban wilderness, for unto you alone is the vision given; your forefathers never saw the like, nor ever dreamt to see it;
You wanderers, you that find them sleeping, touch the sleepie skin of the olden beasts; pull the folds of their skins, & climb them, mount up to the restfull brow;
They shall not stretch their limbs, nor shall they sigh their destructful yawns.
They shall not crush one flower of grass till God commands them.
The doing of the Lord is awful to behold, & wonderfilld; He is the Mighty One, there is none higher than He is, that was incarnate, & became man, and for our sakes was crucifide under Pontius Pilate.
Chapter 5
I am wearie unto death of living, and weary of my own sinfulness; Hope is wearie; there is no freshness in the Earth.
Lord come soon with Glory; let every city witness the strangeness, & prepare them for the general doome:
The cities of the plains are uprooted, they are as wrinkled sheets of paper; they are crumpled like a letter in the anguisht hand of one who has read in it some terrible news;
The churches hefft the streets about them, as the Mennonitish women hefft their skirts so as to run, & be quickly awaie.
In the desert burst also the humble churches of the fruit pickers, goatherds, farmers of cotton & sunflowers & wheat, & the rangers that roam hundreds of millions of acres;
They that gather in small wooden chirches, & do not think it strange, in so much space, to cramp their souls' dilations under rooves— & they worship the Almightie.
But now their churches heave, & greatlie unfurl them, as bountifullie as their hearts have utterd forth prayer & praise;
They break up the erthe about them, they shuffel the stones into heaps,
With a vast sound & a dizziness of color, as it had been an asteroid that crasht in the plains, & made a spout of the red dirt;
And the vast Cretures that are reservd for the destruction roust them out of cotton fields, & out of Cornfields, & out of the Wheate, & they lie down in them & wait:
The soil sticks to their backs, & they bristle with the croppes of corn.
But rest your souls, farmers; rest ye, farmhands; there shall be no harvest of wheat, or of cotton, or of beans.
There is only the last great harvest of souls; therefore fret not your hearts for the reaping: for there will be no reaping.
Seek those drowsie ones in the fields; touch their raspie cheekes; pat their jaws & listen to the deep huff of the nostrils;
They will do no harm, until the Lord commands them.
So in the West as in the East; so in the South as in the North:
According to their architectings & the forms of their domes & their spires, the unbounded churches & the cathedrals must give forth of God's Invention;
And even the beautiful churches brimful of the wolves of men, they also must give forth greatlie of bud & bloome, for peradventure there have prayd within their walls five righteous.
So Lord may it come to pass; I beg it of You will a full heart of joy in the pondering;
It gives my limbs rest & strength, to dream of it; so I beg You also on behalves of all the tired in the Earth; surelie there are a great many.
You alone know how many; but as for me my legs drag, my hands are bruisen & my heart has no solace.
I have sorrows in the Earth all the day, & I gnash my teeth together at night;
But I know that I shall rest beside my Creator, whom I long for.
So Lord may it be; & I shall ask more of You God, I shall ask even more:
Let every pervert priest & every unjust preacher, & each that works his evil in the House of the Lord or in Your name,
And all such sharkish men, let them be caught in ambush, & between their fingers come teeth, as the teeth of Crocodile, or Hyaena—
And those tootht hands, which instrumented grievous harms, let them cry out against their possessors, & upleap to chewe them on the mouth:
That every one of the wicked, lying mouths of hypocrites be chewen with eight mouths;
May they be chewen past all knowing by their own evil hands, & utter speech no more, lacking the tongue even with which to utter apologies.
And may their hands chewe themselves also free, & go awaie like serpents, & burrowe them in the floor, to be saved for a witness against the corrupt ones at Judgement.
May it all come suddenlie, in a single day: across the whole globe & in every country, may the churches bloom, & the strange vast animals lie softlie waiting.
Chapter 6
Let the redwalld city in the East behold it also; & You speak softlie over those battlements:
Lay down your red walls & redwalld millennia—
And so the fam'd walls will come down at the command, & stretch their length upon the ground, for children to run along.
And whisper there also, Lord, over the cathedrals: Burst thy blooms, O domes, for there is wild honey to be gathered from thy blossoms, fragrant with the souls' achings of the souls that longd for my return.
So millions will stand & marvel; & all will watch, & tremble; but a few will rejoice inwardly—
For these are Your elect, in whom You have set a heart of peace, to help them.
Up from the river may there dredge them up colossal heapes of thornie flesh in thick forms, that sun themselves lying on the red bricks:
They will groane & roll over; they will rest their great bulkes in the hollows that their bodies carve out.
Delighted Moscow, touch their domestic paws! Slap the pads of them, you glad people!
Touch your fingers to the coarseness of the horns they wear on their heads, see what sharpness:
Like triplefold Rinocerous their skins are; but they lie soothd.
The streets are smasht; the bridges cannot stand, so vigorouslie do the churches sproute of leafe & bough, & the roots so forceful.
A blesst people witnesses the day: all you that live to see the doom, bear well the holy burden.
Fast, you that have not reckond with your sins; loose your purchasings, set your bags on the ground; your books, lay them on the floor; untie your hair; for the days are come.
Hang not up your drying; cease your toilings, pile your tools in a pile on the floor: put them not back into their places.
Watch the blossoms of the domes, & the longmouthd cretures nectaring— like bees they taste the nectaries of one, & go; of two, & flit;
Use up those days with contemplation: cry out to the Lord for understanding & for salvation, & He will give it.
There sits thick silence over all the city; over the country broods a quiet like white snow that falls prodigiously.
The foolish speke, & their mutterings are as shouts across a frozen tarn;
The babbler will not cease, though his whisper is like a cry in an emptie cathedral.
Put these away from you: speak not, all you wise, nor wonder aloud to your wife; hush your fathers that talk without knowledge, & silence your mothers, that chatter to fill the time.
For the Lord will come near to those with silence, as the Mountain Deer approaches; He will speak with them that speak not.
Some days the Lord will muffle all the air & all the Earthe, as thick clouds had settled in it.
The church bells will not ring; who tries the bellropes finds they fall to the ground, like rotten fruit from the branches of April.
Chapter 7
The powerful are drunk with excess of evil.
I shall account for it all, The LORD whispers into their ears: How many perisht by your corrupt hand? How many did you poison with poisond food & poisond air? How much did you gain for the life of each one?
I shall make you tally the numbers.
How many bodies of laborers broken, & you kept their wages? How many children sold, & you had the profit? How many prisoners enslavd? I will exact it all from your soul, every inch and ounce.
All the innocent, all the beaten & the ruind, I will account for their suffering, for THE LORD WILL HAVE ALL JUSTICE;
He will extract it from the profounds of every soul; from the bones He will get it, as Marrow.
The evil ones reel; their intellects are swallowd up in darkness;
Nor shall they see again until the Judgement, when the Lord will lift the veil from their minds, & they will see His Glory, & fall on their faces.
He will brush away the dimness of old age; the reachless keen capacities of youth He will restore unto them, that they shall have strength twice to tremble; yea thrice to shudder.
But stumble now: as Nebuchadnezzer cralld, crall you, for you shall be kept for the revenge.
Crall in the weeds; the great & noble churches bloom all about you, but you shall not see them: you shall be swallowd up in the mist of your own Corruption.
And out of the pit great beasts aroust them:
Their breth it stinks; their eyes roul with the bright light & they hough;
But they sit obedientlie, till the Lord shall call them to their task, to the labors of the grim day.
Behold them: Behold their long talons, see the steamie snourt of their breathings; look upon their sinewes, drawn tight in their patience;
As drawn bowstrings tautly sit, eager to loose the burden swiftlie, to make the husht air hiss with forthfull dart, so the stiff necks & limbs of these await the unloosing.
Touch them, you frightend people! Reach out to feel the hides of them; the happie days are come, when you must also perish.
Chapter 9
Now every Churche of Christ has bloomd in the Earthe; & all the ornaments of the Houses of the Lord are budded, & bring forth buds, & bloom blossoms, & yield sweetness.
Lifeless beside them sit the crackt mosques, & the stoopt temples & the crooked sinagogues.
As an oak tree roots him in a desolate place agenst a hill, & puts a first little bough up through the corner of the roofe,
But waxes vast with the centuries, to split the walls & open up the foundation stones;
And to peele the roof back day after day, waxing more & more massie, while none have seen it growing there;
For it has growen up with the secrecy as of Trillium in the gloomy woods;
So the Churches of Christ sit with power, & a dilating ruine encircles them, as they had growen there ten thousand years.
But if the Lord lean his Ear down to me to listen to me, & to hear my prayer,
And if it please Him, & He accomplish it thus— then all this has occurd within a day, & the skies were clear, and the weather was warm.
Not one city escapt the vision; not one town escapt; in the wilderness, the hidden shrines gave forth;
The secret churches of the persecuted upheavd mysterious bloomes; they brake up the streets about them, & rose up alofft, & spread their boughs;
And broken old Cathedralls that lay rubbled or buried or built over, they gave forth from under the Earthe also;
And every passer wonderd at such strange flowers.
Tremble now, you wise—you proud, repent—for you will witness more awful scenes.
Chapter 10
Now Lord may the world sit fallow one weeke; the longmouths have done with nektaring, & they have borne the pollen off.
Now the Earth is quiet one week; & this I beseech of the Lord as a little time for the prayers & the fastings of the saved,
And for a few more to be gatherd to Your Mercy, as the gleanings of the field:
Grant it Lord, if it accord with Your good pleasure.
Lay your bodie down to rest; lay your spirit down, forsake all your toilings; for who will escape the Doome?
O Man, set down, & see: you also perish by the Father's Hand, in the universal death;
You shall also run, in the crowds of runners! You shall also shout with them that are shouting.
Laugh then, all you saved! The pit will gape, the hordes of fallers will fall—
Laugh lightly then, dear Christian: for you fall through the floor into the Eternal Judgement.
I consider my destruction also with rejoicing, O God, for indeed I number myself among the worthless.
But as one clear-minded among the cities of the Canaanites, I shall be happie when the destruction comes; I shall praise You;
For as the Canaanites were swept out of the Land, so the whole Earth shall be swept clean, to make it new.
I have turnd away from You after my wanderings; my feet were hot to escape You, who created me;
But Christ has paid it freely for me; it is in Christ I find a heart to pray this boldness.
I pray it in the most glorious name of Christ,
By Whose Perfect Sacrifice am I made clean, utterly cleane when I stand before You.
Do this then, Holie One; accomplish these things for the joy & help of Your chosen, who have waited long & long for the terrible day;
Gladlie they give up their bodies to the destruction; as the digger that hears the cry for supper, & he wipes his sweat & throws down his shovel carelessly,
So do all the saints toss down their bodies for the Judgement.
The wicked cling to a wicked life, but a wise man falls laughing into the abyss—
Because You have set wisdom & gladnesse in his heart, & certainty;
He sees plainly the Work of Your Hand— he knows what is shortly to come.
But let all who walk in foolish ways be horror strucken, when the shakings of the Earth begin, when unimagind beasts whelm the cities & the cities' paths,
May their pulses strum on their necks, & on their wrists, & in their temples; may their hearts leap in them as a rabbit's heart;
For so might one yet be saved by fear, that never turnd his mind to God before the last days.
Chapter 12
May the waters rise up suddenlie—may they rise & go forth;
Let all the unloost Pacific be girdled up with the spray of fire, & the sky fill with the ruddie smoak, & ash.
May the volcanoes give issue to cretures massie of limb, & panting from the furnase of their birthe;
They roll as sleepers, from a long sleepe to the floor, Fresh forms of Life, by God's Hand fairly shapt & forged!!
They plundge their molten bodies in the salt wave, to cool the sudden flesh they carry;
They quench their granite skins with steame, & fearsome sound;
The waters about them boil, as in a forgotten pot, that overboileth at the rims;
And the noise of it is as the noise of red ten thousand hammerd blades sunk at once into the smith's basin to coole them.
The drowsie creatures wallow hissing in the floudde;
They rowle their heate into the frostie main; it choaks the fish, that love an icie current.
May the great wave heave up on the populous coasts; may it swallow the wretched California cities, & the ancient trees be torn up by the roots in the floud,
And oncegreat Seattle sunk unto the hips, & monstrous Tokyo; Taipei the vast, & China's peopled coasts;
The haughty cities all retrefft into the huge & inhumain abysse where vicious shark & squid & whale all ate their fill of the pliant flesh of men.
Let Alaska shudder, & Kamchatka, & their icebergs calve, & roul; let the countries shudder all over, as earthquake after earthquake troubeld them.
And let the great beasts craul up in the coasts; may I be also there Lord, let me see them from a loftie place;
And let one of a middle size reach out his sholder to me—neither the more massie nor the least of the new creatures, that I may sentinel the middle height;
And let me take him by the hookes & horns of his skin, & climb his affrighteous back, whileas he lifts him up again.
Naked let me stand in the high place of his neck; for I will cast my clothes awaie in the Doome, to meet my end as I made my beginning;
And I shall marvel at him that bears me, for the detail of his rough hide to the minutest inch,
And for the horns & spires he wears; as I had stoode among the wildest architecturings of the cathedrals in the dreams of Gothick masons,
Or as I had clomb the roof of some fam'd cathedral.
He snhourts— & the steam carries a man off his feete.
He marches— & his steps deprive men of their own, for the Earth all shivers at his footfalls, that the little statures of men cannot endure it.
So I bestrood him in the spikes, & lurcht with a powerful sway alofft of the ruind places, naked to the skin;
And may a warm wind blow out of the desert places;
May my wife see me up high up on the back of the beaste & Believe; with sudden illumination may her whole mind perceive the Truth, & may she pray with all earnestness in the Lord Christ to be saved;
And may You save her Jesus, & may she die very softlie, & believe in You, & be savd; for I would have her with me in eternitie.
All the fleeing hopeless, let them be pawd easilie underfoot, prest into the hollows that my great one sets in the face of the world, with a mightie paw;
In one instant he wipes away the man & his tangled life.
Joy to those that drown not, that are not swept away in the first violent deluge!
Delight yourselves; for you have receivd some longer time for the marvelling; turn up your eyes aloft & see it, the last creation of the Old Earth;
For Man was not the last, but that which must destroy him is the last creation upon the Old Earth.
Forgoe this body; save it not; but feed your souls upon the vision, feed your hearts on the glorious accomplishment of the present age;
Believe on Christ & take solace; cry out to Him & be pawd under, all you people— for you shall not escape;
But we shall perish all together in a single day; therefore be soothd, & look up at it.
Chapter 13
The whole wide Earth is corrupted; the soil is wearie of sustaining a depraved & senseless people.
The Doom of the Lord is Just; we have desired it long, O God, the Dreadful Day, for through this gate THE JUDGEMENT; by this path to EVERLASTING COMMUNE WITH THE LORD.
We shall see the face of the LORD at last, we shall press His Hands with ours, & see the lines of them, that they were once coarsend with labor.
So some walkt their fragile bodies before this behemoth, praying softlie with their lips, & they were prest out into a little sleepe.
Great are those that fear not, Noble are their happie kind; for every runner but prolongs his terror;
Each must perish, alone with his own demise.
You cities once lamentablie corrupt, once wretchedlie deranged, each after its own evil!
Now my frail heart pities you, who lived in sad unknowing, lacking wisdom or hope, & given over utterlie to ruin & sin ruinouse—
Yet you have done evil; tiny & poor howsoever you are, you have done evil;
Now therefore the LORD's hand is come down agenst the Earthe irremeablie; it is too late.
The towers crash, the babelous buildings fall— the world has never seen the like—
They are toppled by my great beast's paws, or by the paws of another, or by the antlers or the tails;
They spill them like a pleasant vase of flowers from a table; the tiresome works of man are shatterd, the bones of men are gristed out to meal.
Some crusht are & some choakt, whenas the smoke rises up; some with the rubble halvd or unlimbd seek to salve their bodies, dragging them, a grim sight;
But as a little moth is prest into the hand & killd, & what remains is only a little inoffensive powder,
So in the holy fury of the huge creatures for the Glory of the Living God, they press out every soul, to bring them up to the Judgement.
His arms are as great pestles—his chest is like the milling stoane; he sets it down & pushes his bellie into the Earth & shifts it about.
As the seeds of Dandelion scatter in a gust, so the gosts of men are scattered abrode upon the aire, until it seems thick with their drifting.
Strangers they perish together; they fall upon one another, they are twisted up together, this one with that;
Briefly they know the comfort of closeness, they are piled into a cozy pile which comforts them for a time;
They slip together at a tremor of the ground, & fall, & are trodden out just so;
They embrase each other in a last embrace, that had never met; then their ribs give way, one against the other they crackle as the falling oake, & are prest out.
The bridges are collapst with all their burden of passengers & vehicles; they pour out into the rivers & into the bayes.
Every road is pockt, & sinks, & the bombs assault the beasts as showers of rain;
But the creature I have ascended he licketh up the people as a froug, even from far he licketh them up with his stickie tongue;
And he chews them as they fall into his maw, by head or by foote he chews them.
Chapter 14
All over the Earth the creatures roust them up, or dig them up; from the Altai mountains they exhume them, & from the Andes, & the Caucasus, & from the Atlas mountains they arise;
From glaciers of Kenai they hurl them forthe, as they were risen late;
The goats in the wilderness are startled with a fright; they turn to leape, in all directions they bound, albeit they know not whither or wherefrom they flee;
Snapping the bones of their legs in a panick, they kneele & wait most pitifullie, or they tumbel down the rocksel front;
But the great ones are fled alredy; they overleap the mountains like to the chamois bounding in the crags & in the brake, crashing & crashing in their haste.
You luckless animals! that occupy the wrathful way, & perish in it— O you poor, innocent beasts— by the fault of Man you are also trod under,
You are presst in the way without understanding; as the eyes of a young rabbit, carried in the merciless cat's soft mouthe,
So appear the piteous eyes of the innocent beasts, going down to the Doome.
You curse not Man— you wag no finger at his injustice, nor go down thinking bitter thoughts;
But Man, that brings the universal ruin down upon himself, corrupter of all things, he wails for his own sake;
He gnashes his teethe, going up in the strange hand to the death.
There are the old ones, that gather the wicked into their fists with delicate fingres;
They gather them carefullie up in their clutches, as plickt flowers are gatherd into the grip of a young man that would delight his belovd;
But this one hurls them in the sky, one hundred little bodies; they are deceast before they reach the soil again.
Delight in it, you saved, that are mixt sadly into the heaps of the sons of the father of lies;
For your body is broken with the bodies of the corrupt, but your soul is safe.
Now boulders the great fellow hurls alofte, that descend with tails of flame, to pour wide craters in the land;
Yet flee not, brethren, but rejoice; listen to the snough of the open nostrils of Destruction when he snoughs up the scent of wide slautter.
Chapter 15
This thing do I beg of You Lord; this thing do I beg of You now: that everie Bible in the Erthe would shake, & be hatcht.
And that they should bring forth each unknowen beast, which the world of men has not knowen, nor the inventions of their minds;
Some sharp, some leaping, that they would give man the Fear, & much trouble;
And some slow, & some pleasaunt, & some which perplexe the reason of the mind, which has no precēdent for it in the little bounds of Nature you have proscribd unto man.
And may no Bible give forth of the same kind, but let each be distinct from each, every one from the others—
That in the moultitude of forms which has no end, & in the sudden chaos of abundant reckonless life,
The ancient Earth in her faintness, the wide Earth in her last weariness would see again the infinite invention of the Lord, as it saw in the beginning;
And so that it may marvel the eyes of every man, & put the tremble into all flesh, & stand the hairs on end with horror, may it come suddenlie & all at once.
They shall not have the bones of the former creatures, nor shall they be strung of the same sinewes as the meat & milk of Earth sustaine;
They shall not be bound by the fourfold symmetry, or of halves.
Nor to the tyranny of an ancestor's precedents must they bow the head, but they shall be freelie formd—
Needing only the Lord's willingness that they should exist as reason enough to come forthe.
For they shall as if by their own wills be create, & wander upforth from the abyss of the Holie Creation which continualie boileth;
O Lord, remove Your Hand from enclosing it, & these will streme freelie out, & be hatcht from the Holie Writ which is printed abnumerouslie.
For why should not the Lord do all these things? & why should not His Hand be given over to the creation of strange new creatings?
He is the Endless One, the Lord God, there is no hem of Him; the universe is without a corner; it has no edge whose mortar may be scraped at with a finger;
He has built an infinite universe, to awe proud Man: for behind it he shall not look; he shall not peer above it, nor lifft the curtains of the uttermost, to see what is there beyond it.
Now God let Your unpent Mind irrupt into the plain & humble World, & the floud of Your Doing crashe against it, & overwhelm it, that was once so calm & clear.
Chapter 16
But I stand upon one Behemoth's back lurching yet, & stumbling about in his ornamence; he goes with a blank look, with ruine & ruine tirelesslie smoaking in his wake;
And Silence goes after his feet, & it does not cloy him.
But I love it most Lord over spacious land wandering;
With huge space for the eyes' delight & for the mind's savoring crauls the beaste,
Giving welcome reprieve for the awful destruction of so many images of God, torn & spralld in the dust, or crusht or halvd,
With so many of whom I shall not share the delight of beholding You, though we must certainly share the terror thereof.
But in the expansive places my heart is at rest, & I have ease for my soule, & I am blest with foretaste of the New Earth, where I think Man shall live withouten any machine,
But there will sit villadges on the backs of vast tortoises, with land thereon for the farming of wheate, & of barley,
And those tortoises will roame in close orbit of the New Jerusalem;
The tortoises that liv'd in ancient time, Lord God resurrect them with the resurrected Erthe; where each man & woman may toil their loving toil, & taste the fruit of their own glad labors, & share freelie of it.
But the day is not yet finisht; before us again the cities reare up from off the horizon, as a sleeper's head arises from his pillow, when the thunder sounds;
Again the beaste he paws a void into the world's face, there where millions had once milld aboute;
The good & the evil are together cast into fresh potterfields; for the time is not now to sort them.
The cold rain falls upon my nakednes; it cools me from the heat of the viewless slautter which the many horrid ones plough inexorablie across the land.
O Christ, my God, my body must be broken alsoe; yet let my hour be postponed a little space, let my fate be patient with me.
Now Lord if You accept this prayer, if You accomplish these things which I have set down on the paper, in the fulness of Holy Desire, albeit my heart is hot, surelie it is for boldness that You receive it;
Surely for that no other has composd the like in better fashion or more earnestlie, or in any manner which has pleasd You the more; or merely for that none have askt it thus, but only I have asked it;
Yet let me beg another thing, more boldlie still, & I shall go no further;
This other thing I shall ask of you, but I shall ask nothing beyond it:
Lord God that I should borrow wings from You for a time, as the celestial cretures wear, to soar above the distant & unreachable scenes of ruine that cover the globe—
That I may drift above it & gaze down at the strange doings of the day, which are innumerable.
May I go forthe over all the land upon wings, to see it:
To see the houses in the mountain villadges lift up on naked legs & pounce off, with mortal speede prance away;
Some into waters leaping, some over cliffs' edges, & some diminisht into distance where I cannot see.
Elsewhere a whole city sinks into the dark Erthe; for the ground is cleavd asunder beneathe it,
And swallowd up are all the houses with their goods, & every soule goes down alive into the pit:
They fall a quarter of an hour in darkness, all the people & the people's works;
Bless the Lord, you happie crowds! Fall & Bless Him! But one minute let suffice for the screaming;
All the rest devote to prayer; for the thoughts of your heart arise to God more quickly than even your bodies fall.
Cry out with praise, & sing; for the joy of this falling, for the gladness of the Final Judgement come at last!
How many perisht in the waiting, but you have liv'd to see the very day!
I would fall also among them, I would also fall screaming beside them;
And cease when they cease; & gave courage where I could, & sing hallelujahs over the doomd croude;
And when the sky grows above me a point of light like a single star, & the air damp, & choaking,
I would rise up again, praying over the hosts, blessing them in my ascent; & may there be great numbers of them saved.
My fair contintent—rubbled & grim, from one end of it to another! I soard along, I overlookt it:
I saw with delight that chilld my bones a thousand grave scenes, which I shall not recounte; may my soul profit by the seeing, Lord God.
America! my father! How you are swallowd up!
The runners in the desert are pursued; by an unknowen creature they are caught, & clamord over;
The hiders in the woods are pluckt out of it by terrible hands, & destroyd; they are consumed;
The climbers on the craggs are loost from their holds; a claw removes their clutch, & they plummet into canyons;
The swimmers are chewn; the wealthie in their helicopters are pulld down, their ships are sunken, their planes are shards on the churning ocean's face.
Not one survives; every life is in the Hand of the Lord, & He is weary of our weariness;
Our burdens He has declared too heavie, & in His Mercy He will take them from us.
He is mournful with all the mournfull prayers of the Erthe;
Therefore it is the end, & not one survives.
Chapter 17
Pupil-swifte the old ones slew their millions, slewe & slewe them, gathring them & hurling the frail bodies broadcast, as the seeds of rye or of barley.
They strike men out as matches; as ants they sweep them with a palm, or swat them out as flies.
God have mercie God have mercie God have mercie; may the innocent be blest to go down under softer deaths;
May they also be brought aloft unto the backs of great & original beasts, may they ride around some time, & their souls have benefit of it.
All must perish; but those that have sufferd deeplie in the world, Father may they taste the sweet freedom of Your Favor,
May they be comforted by a word whisperd to their spirits, & into their hearts:
That it is the Lord's Day; that the Day of Judgement is come, when all things are made right;
Do not fear, O you downtrodden, for the Lord has sav'd you from it forever.
In the great isthmus of the Americas the inhuman feet of the destroyers toss;
They thrash the steamie volcanoes, that give forthe a bleche of flame & soaring stones,
And overmany cretures pourd out of it in their flintie skins, hot for the destruction;
With scorpion's bodie upright, & the imbricated back, or of centipede's horrid shape & vast, & their legs as treetrunks,
All wailing in a mournfull voice, as they had been unwilling to go out from the volcanoes;
They roll out of them clumsilie, on the rivers of red rock they spue forthe rolling, and their legs stick out in the air uncertainlie,
As a dog, that has overrun the object of his jaws, turns a sharp turne, & rolls over twice;
So likewise the clumsie new beings make their exodus from the moulten deepes, from their severall volcanoes, whenas they were burste.
Let them lift your heart up, sorrowful man— the spirit world lives yet, & yet involves in ours; then do not despaire.
The city Panama, with the dark concrete, that sweats to keep the vines away, that choaks under the vegetation's sly creepe—
The city is ruind, all is ruind.
That most wonderous work of human art, the Canal of Panama, is ruind: the doors of massie steele & concrete are bended;
They are crackt & bended; they let the ocean in again.
The cargoe ships are halved; all the produce of whole cities is submerged, four hundred million pounds of the industriall fruit is sunke:
Cars, tractors, coal, & steel, & grain, all are sunken in the deep, & none have time to mourn the loss of profits;
The sailors leape into the waters & are drownd; the workers flee, & find no safetie, sinewd tho they be with iron nerves, & wrought of such a solid stufe.
O haughtie heart of Man! O haughtie spirit! that such miraculous works has workt in the world, as our ancestors could never have conceiv'd;
But Babel also sank in its forgottenness; for stone by stone it crumbled, & the roots & vines made centuries their long & tender labors, till it lay a little heape, & it was lost.
The canals are seald up; the skies men boasted in three hundred years, they shall not any more traverse.
Trampled are all Darien's suffocated lands, where death follows death impatiently,
And serpents coil over serpents, & the spiders tangle up their legs, one with another they tangle them, so numerous are they in their creepings.
The great beasts pour great hollows into the ground; they gouge it up;
As the yoked oxen pull the ploughshare, they pull the thorns of their flesh across the world, to gouge it up.
And into the furrows the angels sow seede; & the original creatures press the seeds into the soil with bizarre hoofes:
These are for the new creation, which will blossom out of the ruin of the old.
Chapter 18
But Lord Your Gladness is infinite; as far as Your Thought reaches, Joy also spreads his wide hands.
The Bison you formd with delight; You chiseld out the roufe skin of the Rhinocerous with laughter in Your Mouthe.
You smil'd over the tendrills of the Giant Squidde, as You conceivd him to Your uttermost satisfaxion;
Until You were enchanted with his fearsome shape, you molded him;
That he should look out of one prodigious eye, & lurk in the sheer abyss, in darkness—
You spoke it, & it was made, & You rejoiced; & all the heavens rejoiced, to see Your gladness in him.
The horrible cartilage of the sharke You also wroght; Your face was bright to see the sharke made, & the stars also shone for joy.
You have made him fierce, & happie as a dog, & he abides in perpetual unspoken prayer with You, albeit he is terrible to man to behold.
Yet if it gladden the Lord that the sharks should swim, & thrash their prey aparte, then should it delight also a man;
Rejoice then with me, fellow man, as the heavens rejoice in the sharke's wideroamings; & praise what the heavens praise.
The drawn-out viper also is Your Joye; he sees with his eye, & he snuffeth up a scent in his nostril;
But in the jungle-dark he also percieves a man by the emanated heat of his skin;
He is a creature that sees without the light; he sees the warmthe of an animal by a secret perception; it is a miracle of the flesh.
Glorious God Your Creatings are infinite for Your own sake; You glorie in the dazzle of Your own Might, & in Your own great doings;
And Your Handiwork the Creation weepes, to partake in such great happiness.
With our telescopes we gaze out of the blue Earthe into rimless space; we gaze out upon the strange planets that swarm in darkness—
More numerous than the drops of rain that fall all summer, when the thunder startles the animals, & the trees are shaken, & loose their fresh & tendre boughs of green leaves—
You have shapen everie hill of those planets, & everie valley, farther than Man may look;
You have made everie inch & everie piece of an inch of them, & each speck of the dust that driffts about upon their faces.
But Man shall never see them; if he lived a hundred million years he should never see them, nor have any idea of their existence.
Beyond what Man shall ever see there are still mountains; beyond what he shall ever know there are still clouds that move soothinglie across skies;
There is wind & rain beyond our farthest reach; storms churn, & marr the faces of unknowen worlds; & in other lands the watery waves also cast them up gentlie on the warm shoares;
Some of these being lifeless Oceans, eerie & wild; & some others, it may be, bearing of fish, & of other kinds that move in the sea,
Unlike all those creatures Man has known, or any of his brothers in the Earthe.
You have done it for Your own Joy; You have built it for Your Delight; not the camel You love nor the Froug, but the forgement thereof; that a new creature is and moves.
THEREFORE DELIGHT THYSELF, Our Great Glad God! Delight Thee with a new Creation:
Open the ocean's floors, open the caves & the depths of caves, the stones break them open, make the mines to give forthe;
Let there come up even those animals the world has forgotten, to make havock before the eyes of men, to stir their hearts & cause them to wonder;
Let there come up new & old, from the dark places, to cause mischief by the tooth & the fang,
By their voice & by their imadge let the noble chaos come swiftlie, come brightlie.
A great rain of long Frogs Lord I pray You to scatter down abroad over the enchaunting breadth of the Great Lakes;
My dear childhood's lakes which are vast & fridgid as the north seas, that heap a violent wave agenst the shore with more than thunder;
That spit up the fragments of vast ships upon the land, or sink them into the darkness with the bodies of their mariners, that flote not, but sink down quicklie in the fresh, the frostie deep.
May the long frougs swim swiftlie on the face of the waters, making their ruckuss, with ten limbs propulsing them as gallies go along the sea;
Broacking & Blownching with the plump guts, groaffing from a swolen chin, swolen with aire;
And in the ships may they make terror for the sailors, that recognize not their form or kind;
They heap mischiefs on them with their sharp claws, as they scale the hulls & the masts, & the legs of confounded men, or their arms;
And the houses near, let them be also perforate from the creepings of the strange frogges, that swarm the housecats also, to chewe them;
And the small dogs; & the coyote they will not turn their appetites awaie from, but taste them with sharp nibbelings, & cold tongues.
Happie Father if it please You, let a small Son-of-Alligatre go alofft on leathrie wings, as of a tripple fold of leathre;
Let these mount the skie, as abnumerouslie the bats mount the skie each night;
In their millions may they swarm the soaring air, stooping at the necks of men & women, & at the crouds of starlings & of rock doves;
And may their deep hissings fill thicklie the hights, & make the wind to throb, & everie heart that hears it to shudder;
They chewe a man in the necke; they gnaw a woman in the sholder & remove again, nor stay to eat.
They have no tail, & the teeth run up & about the snowt, & over the jowls, as they could not stop their teeth from enumerating themselves;
So they slice the flesh, without ever opening the mawe.
Lord may there go a vast crabbe in the desert waste, all shaggd with lichens that have grewn upon his carapace the millenniae;
Let these ones snapp their clawes at everie one they meete; let them pluck & chewe a man if they catch one;
Give them swiftness as the automobile, & great appetites.
May it come soon Lord, may it come as I have written it.
Chapter 19
Lord make also that which the imagining of Man could never conceive by its own power; that, unless You have shown him, he may never imagine it;
Lord heape the creatures extravagantly over the whole Earth, with shapes & ends that could never have been surmised, nor halfway guesst at;
May these overwhelm the worlde, until they are so many they trample even one another, slauttering one another in the general doome, in their vigor & their panick.
Now while I am asking let me further aske; while I pleade let me pleade to the uttermoste, unabashedlie:
Glorious God I beg it hotlie, resurrect those dinosaurs that trod the Erthe in ancient time, & those that plied the Ocean wave, resurrect:
In their living majestie I would behould them; in their terrible destruction I would gaze on them & marvell;
But for a few moments that mankind may feed their eyes & their hearts upon them;
For every one must perish; & therefore the titanick Creation of old, which You made to delight Your own Heart, kind & laughing God, let us delight ourselves also to see it.
There are those that shall turn & run from them, without comprehending; but to whose hearte God has given courage, & courageous love of Him, they shall stand in boldness to apprehend the vision.
Let the dinosaurs cry out with shudderous voice; let their throtes streyn & stand rigid with the hoarse howl; may they cry with all the urgeant chaos of their fresh lungs.
And those escapers that love their lives, if they should escape the stamping feet, & the keen edges of teeath, may the very Earth betray them;
May the Pit gape suddenlie as they fly, to swalloue them.
And the dinosaurs, & the beasts of old that trod the Earth in ancient time, Lord, these that prepar'd the way for Man as it were by a continual gardening—
Grant that they shall abide on the New Earth, grant that we shall go beside them forever & ever to Your Glory.
Howbeit the strange inventions of the day, as the trees with the hanging stickie boughs, that snag a fleeing fellow & emprison him as in a spider's web, let these novelties not abide there, but pass away;
For a dinosaur was to prepare the Earth for Man, but that which was made only for his destruction, may it also go to the destruction.
Openly I pray these desperate things for that I am in Christ Jesus, & the Father hears me for Jesus' sake.
Therefore do I pray to the uttermost bound of my heart, beyond all propriety, knowing I make myself ridiculous.
I am afraid to die, Lord; comfort me, when the bight of flesh makes me wince; You will save me when the death comes sudden, & my body is torn & broken with the rest.
Chapter 20
Dear God I pray the moon should also twitch, & flutter; & as the egg is crackt from within it & a beak emerges, so too should the moon trouble, & be crackt, & beaks emerge from it;
And that a host of birdlike creature should exode, with a powerfull throughsting of the pale wings, to settle over the world,
Spearing a man with a sharp beak, piercing him through to the floore & breaking him;
Tossing a woman also into the air to consume her, as the heron tosses a fish to eat.
These let them settle thicklie over the world, splitting men & devouring them, until the fields are miry by the spilling of bloud.
But the innocent & the faithfull, may they be quicklie slaine & softlie, or to be carried some while by the birds, if they should pray it.
Blest, who see the day & understand it— who see the pale birds hopping as they land, & know that the Lord has done it— who look neither left nor right to flee.
For who would endure this life forever? But sometime we must go away from our bodies; & how much better that we go all of us together, all in one day.
Horrible are their cries ringing out in the valleys; their voices were not nourisht by the wholesome food of the Earth, but shapt rather in an unknown place, on a pale sustenance;
For a whale's voice is far from mine, but he is my brother in the universe;
And a frog's long tongue is distant from my own, but he is my cousin still;
And the elk wails strangely, but our throats are likewise fosterd by the same soil's produce.
But with these ones I share no root in the Erthe; these are wrought up of another material, which I have not tasted; nor have I imagind it.
Now as they make their mischief, happy God, may the face of the world so creep with fresh invention that there are men who die merely by the weight of them;
Neither torn by the tooth, nor with a clawe; but presst under the mighty heft of so many & such vastive fellows of the Creation.
How the whole Earthe croaks & crauls! it creeps in everie portion, great & small! There is no nook in the world that is silent; nor a single corner that is still!
Every one goes to his task; this one to the hilltops, anothre into the town; one burrows him benethe a structure to fell it, & another smatches a bridge to rubble.
Everie one has its task; they go to it as simply as the cattle go among the grasses, wherever his inclination leads;
But only Man's task is ever without variation, for his sad labor is only to die his own death.
Chapter 21
Set Your infinite mercy aside, dere Father, set pity aside; for we have been dealt gently with, & the whole world suffers;
Now we desire an end of things; against our own bodies we plead for it.
How sick is my heart in this hour! How sick is every heart! but I will rejoice to see the end of the glorious ruine;
For the apple tree lives that it should make its apples; but this world's fruit is its undoing, and the hour of ripeness is arrived.
And as for me Lord I cannot live much longer, my heart cannot endure it; I am not well; I suppose not one is well.
It is good to end things, Lord, & make them anew; Dear God of Mercy & Kindness, it is a good thing, to start again—
You have promist an end of this world, & a Judgement, & a New Earth; so let it come now; now is the proper hour.
Chapter 22
All these things are enough, Father, to accomplish the laying waste of all land, & of every man to the last;
But still I ask that the sharks may go fleetlie limbd, & swift of land, & blind also with the same righteous anger;
On many legs or fewe let them gallope; the number of their legs is not important, so be it they are swifft, swifft, & hot with anger.
Every man has his own death; every woman & child must also taste the mortall cup;
But Man has made life precious overmuch in his own mind, as if it should go on endlesslie, or as if it were a most desirable thing;
Lo, for years he has had no thought or consideration of death; wherefore the whirlwind of it oppresses his heart, & constricts his breath.
It is the heart that is precious, all you unthoughtful ones; for it is not quencht, but thirsts forever for its object;
Therefore it is the greatest treasure of a man; for his thirst & his despair is the only hope for him;
For Christ Jesus is its object; the Love without end or horizon;
Cry out to Him, & take long draughts of the Living Water; Believe in Him, and be saved.
Chapter 23
So we shall all perish together, as it were all in one great heap, & all at once.
Is it not a wondrous thing you have heard? Do you find my voice to be like a fresh stream, & do you drink heartily of it?
I am light, I am limbd with gladness to speke it; all my mouth is filld with honey that goes out of me & delights me.
My flesh is made light with the contemplation; my burdens are made easier & my eyes shrink with smiling,
To think that I shall watch with my living eyes all the hosts of the unreal creatures, hatcht of Bibles or cralld up from the depths of gloome;
That I shall see the bright descendence of the Son of God, the Lord Christ, who shall roil the whole world awfullie.
The last of men are perisht; lie down, you few, benethe the hoofe of the impossible monsters; lie down beneath them, & you shall see clearlie.
With a great noise the race of Man is perisht from the Earth which was made for his sake; with a great cry he is extinguisht.
Now return Lord Christ to the Earth, to roil the vast globe with a blinding light;
And all the wide Earthe be emptiness, & quiet.
A gust blows; a pebble clatters into the darknes of a chasm; & every lizard's head turns to look.
The ash of a smouldering house gives out, & scatters on the dead land; the jowls of the ruminators cease, & they turn to see.
The calm footsteps of Christ disturb not the destroyers, stickie with human blood, though He takes their breath from them & makes their colossal bodies sleepe.
And I Lord am one most highly blest, to have seen You wandering on the face of the ruind land, burnt & strewn with rubble;
But I have outlasted proper bounds, I have outlivd the just eradication of all corrupte flesh & bone of man;
Therefore set me down.
May I be pawd under in halves, as my brethren were pawd under;
May I be torn with the teeth, as my sisters were torn with the teeth;
Yet I shall rejoice, for it is the only pain remaining to the Earth; it shall be the last of our grimacing;
I will groan no more in my tiredness, nor weepe in my anguish.
As an actor I will cry a shrill cry— I will loose hoarsely the shout of my torment, albeit I am drunk with gladness;
As on a stage he dies his mock death, well-satisfyd with the role he has playd, & thinking of the praise he must shortly have.
So shall I be the last of the old mankind to taste death, if Your Mercy favor me so highly, & if You stoop thus low, to hear my gloomie prayers, & to accept them.
Do not forget me Lord; & give me strength to endure unto the end.
In Christ's most glorious name I pray these things.
Chapter 24
No longer is it profitable to man to go on living; every ear has heard the Word of the Lord & the Gospel of Christ the Savior.
So God may it come to pass very soon; & if the work pleases You then may it come as I have written it, with my heart full of miserie & impatience.
I will pray again to You Lord that the last days come just so, & soon, again I shall pray until they do come, or I perish.
Devoid of the proof of Your gladness accepting this prayer, may it be burnt or worm eaten in a pit alongside my corrupted flesh,
And hold it not a sin against me, to beg such boldness, or so unhumbly to speak before God.
But let all who are indignant at my prayer go some other way, & turn their eyes to some other text, these being a kind of scribe & pharisee, & unbearable to me,
That can abide no earnest word from the pit of true human despair, but only what history has already deemd acceptable to speak or desire, with a stony approval, that only will they accept;
They forget that God is alive with consuming fire, He abides with us each moment, He sees the unclean hearts of you bitter ones,
He sees all the soot in your mouths from your unwise hearts' burnt offerings to a dead god & a printed book, while the Living Lord eyes you.
I will pray from the depth of my being day & night, I will groan my destroyous longings & I will trust in the salvation of the one that has died for me & for all the world.
In Christ's exceedingly glorious name, Father, & with the small flame of the Holy Spirit in me I pray it all; forever & ever permit me to be near You God my Creator, in this meager life & in the endless next, Amen.
