How Babylon, Babylon was overthrown,
And how Euphrates flowed with blood—
Ah, but His mercy through the wide world sown,
The tree with healing bud!
I heard, among the hosts of Paradise,
The glad new song that never tires,
A Lamb as it had been slain in sacrifice
Enthroned amid the choirs.
After the utmost woes have taken toll,
And ravens plucked the eyes of kings,
God’s own strange peace shall come upon the soul
On gentle, dove-like wings.
The Dragon cast into the voidless night,
God’s city cometh from above,
Built by the sword of Michael and his might,
But founded in God’s love.
EDEN RE-OPENED
NO man regarded where God sat
Among the rapt seraphic brows,
And God’s heart heavy grew thereat,
At man’s long absence from His house.
Then from the iris-circled throne
A strange and secret word is said,
And straightway hath an angel flown,
On wings of feathered sunlight sped,
Through space to where the world shone red.
Reddest of all the stars of night
To the hoar watchers of the spheres,
But ashy cold to man’s dim sight,
And filled with sins and woes and fears
And the waste weariness of years.
(No laughter rippled in the grass,
No light upon the jewelled sea;
The sky hung sullenly as brass,
And men went groping tortuously.)