sing to thee A hymn of laud, a solemn canticle, Ere on the cypress wreath, which overshades The throne of Death, I hang my mournful lyre, And give its wild strings to the desert gale. Rise, Son of Salem! rise, and join the strain, Sweep to accordant tones thy tuneful harp, And, leaving vain laments, arouse thy soul To exultation. Sing hosanna, sing, And halleluiah, for the Lord is great, And full of mercy! He has thought of man; Yea, compass'd round with countless worlds, has thought Of us poor worms, that batten in the dews Of morn, and perish ere the noonday sun. Sing to the Lord, for he is merciful: He gave the Nubian lion but to live, To rage its hour, and perish; but on man He lavish'd immortality and Heaven. The eagle falls from her aërial tower, And mingles with irrevocable dust: But man from death springs joyful, Springs up to life and to eternity. Oh, that, insensate of the favouring boon, The great exclusive privilege bestow'd On us unworthy trifles, men should dare To treat with slight regard the proffer'd Heaven, And urge the lenient, but All-Just, to swear In wrath, "They shall not enter in my rest." Might I address the supplicative strain To thy high footstool, I would pray that thou Wouldst pity the deluded wanderers, And fold them, ere they perish, in thy flock. Yea, I would bid thee pity them, through Him, Thy well beloved, who, upon the cross, Bled a dread sacrifice for human sin, And paid, with bitter agony, the debt Of primitive transgression.

Oh! I shrink, My very soul doth shrink, when I reflect That the time hastens, when, in vengeance clothed, Thou shalt come down to stamp the seal of fate On erring mortal man. Thy chariot wheels Then shall rebound to earth's remotest caves, And stormy Ocean from his bed shall start At the appalling summons. Oh I how dread, On the dark eye of miserable man, Chasing his sins in secrecy and gloom, Will burst the effulgence of the opening Heaven; When to the brazen trumpet's deafening roar Thou and thy dazzling cohorts shall descend, Proclaiming the fulfilment of the word! The dead shall start astonish'd from their sleep! The sepulchres shall groan and yield their prey, The bellowing floods shall disembogue their charge Of human victims. From the farthest nook Of the wide world shall troop the risen souls, From him whose bones are bleaching in the waste Of polar solitudes, or him whose corpse, Whelm'd in the loud Atlantic's vexed tides, Is wash'd on some Caribbean prominence, To the lone tenant of some secret cell In the Pacific's vast ... realm, Where never plummet's sound was heard to part The wilderness of water; they shall come To greet the solemn advent of the Judge.

Thou first shalt summon the 

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