Poems (Emma M. Ballard Bell)/Time, Death, and Eternity
TIME, DEATH, AND ETERNITY.
O Earth! when the dark realms of chaos and nightAt first knew the gleams of that mystical light,Creation's bright herald its dawn to proclaim,When first by the power of Omnipotence cameThe worlds in their grandeur primeval and brightTo journey through space on their pathways of light,When first the Spheres chanted their music sublime,Then earth, sun, and stars hailed the birthday of Time.The dim throng of ages encircles me now;The seal of the ancient is set on my brow;Yet swiftly I move on my lone, silent way,'Mid glories of night and the splendors of day,As when the Almighty his mandate first spoke,And thus into being the universe woke. Wondrous, O Earth! are the changes I've wrought:Powers and Dominions to ruins I've brought;Grandeur and glory have sunk 'neath my sway;Beauty I've folded in robes of decay;By the sad changes that oft I have wrought,Woe to thy children, O Earth! I have brought. They call me Destroyer, these children of thine;But, ah! from my ruins spring glories divine.I only destroy, that progression's swift car,Whose coming forever I hail from afar,May move unimpeded upon its bright way,Till o'er thee, O Earth! dawn Millennial day,Till man to his God-given dignity rise,His dwelling on earth, but his goal in the skies;Till error's dark reign on the earth shall be o'er,And truth to her throne mount triumphant once more. O Earth! o'er my ruins thy children may weep,But still for me ever deep rev'rence they keep:The shadowy halls of the dim past are mine,And round them forever sweet memories twine;And gems of the soul there forever I keep,Brought up from its fountains so sacred and deep;There strains of soft music in melody flow;There wander the forms of the dear Long Ago;And tender and holy the sweet light that fallsO'er pictures that hang there in Memory's halls. Ceaselessly onward, O Earth! is my way; Moments I bring thee, how brief is their stay! From me thus ever thy children must learn Much which is lost once can never return. Leaving all vanities, may they pursue Only the noble, the pure, and the true! When o'er thee, O Earth, my last great day shall dawn,Mortality's veil from the soul be withdrawn,Then thou shalt be changed, and my reign shall be o'er:Eternity's day shall be thine evermore.
To wisdom of Time thou hast listened, O Earth!I boast not to thee so illustrious birth;For sad was the day, full of woe was the hour,Thy children, O Earth! knew first Death's fatal power.The hopes of the spirit how often I blight,And shroud all its sunlight in sorrow's dark night! All nations, O Earth! my dark presence have known,Before me vain glory hath faded and flown:Through palace of royalty silent I glide,And soon from the throne of his glory and prideThe monarch descends, and 'mid wailing and woe,All scepterless, crownless, by Death is laid low.I come to the spot where so weary and wornThe beggar is waiting, dejected, forlorn;Till night shall have passed, and the morning againShall call him to wander in hunger and pain,—I come, and his vigils no more he doth keep,His woes all forgotten in Death's dreamless sleep. And ever, O Earth! to the Christian I've comeA messenger sent from the spirit's own home,And angels have wafted the spirit awayAfar to the realms of an unending day.When by the clay temple where once the soul dweltBoth Sorrow and Love in their silence have knelt,Then Faith and her bright sister Hope have met there,Religion's bright daughters, so holy and fair.Then Faith spoke to Love of the glories of heav'n,Where ties of affection can never be riven,And Hope to her sorrowing sister hath said,"O Sorrow! weep not for the soul which is fled;Love's treasures she'll clasp yet,where on a bright shoreThe good and the beautiful dwell evermore." O Earth! by the dim solemn portals I standThat open from Time's to Eternity's land;And thus shall it be till the dawn of that dayWhen Earth and the heavens shall both pass away.
Thou'st listened, O Earth! to Time and to Death:These words unto thee now Eternity saith.Beginning to me there hath never been known;I dwelt with the Infinite Being aloneWhen one void, all vast, without limit, was space,The finite within it had never held place.'Neath empire of Time, O Earth! thou art now;At last Time himself to my scepter shall bow; Though Death o'er thy children hath long held his sway,When elements melt, and thou passest away,From voice of the Angel of God the Most HighShall come forth the edict that Death too shall die."Forever," the word that abideth with me:I saw no beginning, no end shall I see. And happy, O Earth! shall thy children e'er beWho treasures for heaven confide unto me;For never, O Earth! in the realms of my sphereShall breathe there a sigh, or fall there a tear,But joy in deep rapturous tides shall e'er rollFrom presence of God o'er the glorified soul.Then human thought, freed from the fetters of Time,Endued with new strength, and with powers sublime,Shall myst'ries unveil, and new truths shall explore,The Infinite Being knew only before.Should back unto chaos the worlds wing their flight,In darkness unfathomed to quench all their light;Again in the measureless regions of spaceMaterial forms should hold never a place,O'er wreck of the universe still would the soul,While ages eternal should over it roll,Triumphantly gaze in the consciousness sureThat long as Jehovah the soul shall endure.