title="[22]"/> See where man's voluntary sacrifice
Bows his meek head, and God eternal dies!
Fixt to the Cross, his healing arms are bound,
While copious Mercy streams from every wound.
Mark the blood-drops that life exhausting roll,
And the strong pang that rends the stubborn soul!
As all death's tortures, with severe delay,
Exult and riot in the noblest prey.
And can'st thou, stupid man, those sorrows see,
Nor share the anguish which He bears for Thee?
Thy sin, for which his sacred Flesh is torn,
Points ev'ry nail, and sharpens ev'ry thorn;
Canst thou?—while nature smarts in ev'ry wound,
And each pang cleaves the sympathetic ground!
Lo! the black sun, his chariot backward driv'n,
Blots out the day, and perishes from Heav'n:
Earth, trembling from her entrails, bears a part,
And the rent rock upbraids man's stubborn heart.
The yawning grave reveals his gloomy reign,
And the cold clay-clad dead, start into life again.
And thou, O tomb, once more shalt wide display,
Thy satiate jaws, and give up all thy prey.
Thou, groaning earth shalt heave, absorpt in flame,
As the last pangs convulse thy lab'ring frame;
When the same God unshrouded thou shalt see,
Wrapt in full blaze of pow'r and Majesty,
Ride on the clouds; whilst, as his chariot flies,
The bright effusion streams through all the skies.
Then shall the proud dissolving mountains glow,
And yielding rocks in fiery rivers flow:
The molten deluge round the globe shall roar,
And all man's arts and labour be no more.
Then shall the splendors of th' enliven'd glass
Sink undistinguish'd in the burning mass.
And O! till earth, and seas, and Heav'n decay,
Ne'er may that fair creation fade away;
May winds and storms those beauteous colours spare,
Still may they bloom, as permanent as fair,
All the vain rage of wasting time repell,
And his Tribunal see, whose Cross they paint so well.