“How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!”—PSALM lxxxiv. 1.
ANCIENT of days, to whom all times are NOW,
Before whose glory seraphims do bow
Their blushing cheeks, and veil their blemish’d faces,
That, uncontain’d at once dost fill all places;
How glorious, O how far beyond the height
Of puzzled quills, or the obtuse conceit
Of flesh and blood, or the too flat reports
Of mortal tongues, are Thy expressless courts!
Whose glory to paint forth with greater art,
Ravish my fancy, and inspire my heart,
Excuse my bold attempt, and pardon me
For showing sense, what faith alone should see.
Ten thousand millions, and ten thousand more
Of angel-measur’d leagues, from the eastern shore
Of dungeon earth, His glorious palace stands,
Before whose pearly gates ten thousand bands
Of armed Angels wait to entertain
Those purged souls, for which the Lamb was slain;
Whose guiltless death, and voluntary yielding
Of whose giv’n life, gave the brave court her building.
Her streets with burnish’d gold are paved round;
Stars lie like pebbles scatter’d on the ground;
Pearl mixed with onyx, and the jasper stone,
Made gravell’d causeways to be trampled on.
There shines no sun by day, no moon by night;
The palace glory is, the palace light:
There is no time to measure motion by,
Their time is swallow’d in eternity:
Wry-mouth’d disdain, and corner-hunting lust,
And two-fac’d fraud, and beetle-brow’d distrust,
Soul-boiling rage, and trouble-state sedition,
And giddy doubt, and goggle-ey’d suspicion,
And lumpish sorrow, and degen’rous fear,
Are banish’d thence, and death’s a stranger there:
But simple love, and sempiternal joys,
Whose sweetness never gluts, nor fulness cloy;
Where face to face our ravish’d eye shall see
Great ELOHIM, that glorious One in Three,
And Three in One, and seeing Him shall bless Him,
And blessing, love Him; and in love possess Him,
Here stay, my soul, and ravish’d in relation,
The words being spent, spend now in contemplation.
FRANCIS QUARLES.