After this the Judgment

As eager home-bound traveller to the goal, / Or steadfast seeker on an unsearched main, / Or martyr panting for an aureole, / My fellow-pilgrims pass me, and attain / That hidden mansion of perpetual peace, / Where keen desire and hope dwell free from pain: / That gate stands open of perennial ease; / I view the glory till I partly long, / Yet lack the fire of love which quickens these. / O, passing Angel, speed me with a song, / A melody of heaven to reach my heart / And rouse me to the race and make me strong; / Till in such music I take up my part, / Swelling those Hallelujahs full of rest, / One, tenfold, hundred-fold, with heavenly art, / Fulfilling north and south and east and west, / Thousand, ten-thousand-fold, innumerable, / All blent in one yet each one manifest; / Each one distinguished and beloved as well / As if no second voice in earth or heaven / Were lifted up the Love of God to tell. / Ah, Love of God, which Thine Own Self hast given / To me most poor, and made me rich in love, / Love that dost pass the tenfold seven times seven. / Draw Thou mine eyes, draw Thou my heart above, / My treasure and my heart store Thou in Thee, / Brood over me with yearnings of a dove; / Be Husband, Brother, closest Friend to me; / Love me as very mother loves her son, / Her sucking firstborn fondled on her knee: / Yea, more than mother loves her little one; / For, earthly, even a mother may forget / And feel no pity for its piteous moan; / But Thou, O Love of God, remember yet, / Through the dry desert, through the waterflood / (Life, death), until the Great White Throne is set. / If now I am sick in chewing the bitter cud / Of sweet past sin, though solaced by Thy grace, / And ofttimes strengthened by Thy Flesh and Blood, / How shall I then stand up before Thy face, / When from Thine eyes repentance shall be hid, / And utmost Justice stand in Mercy's place: / When every sin I thought or spoke or did / Shall meet me at the inexorable bar, / And there be no man standing in the mid / To plead for me; while star fallen after star / With heaven and earth are like a ripened shock, / And all time's mighty works and wonders are / Consumed as in a moment; when no rock / Remains to fall on me, no tree to hide, / But I stand all creation's gazing-stock, / Exposed and comfortless on every side, / Placed trembling in the final balances / Whose poise this hour, this moment, must be tried? -- / Ah, Love of God, if greater love than this / Hath no man, that a man die for his friend, / And if such love of love Thine Own Love is, / Plead with Thyself, with me, before the end; / Redeem me from the irrevocable past; / Pitch Thou Thy Presence round me to defend; / Yea seek with piercèd feet, yea hold me fast / With piercèd hands whose wounds were made by love; / Not what I am, remember what Thou wast / When darkness hid from Thee Thy heavens above, / And sin Thy Father's Face, while Thou didst drink / The bitter cup of death, didst taste thereof / For every man; while Thou wast nigh to sink / Beneath the intense intolerable rod, / Grown sick of love; not what I am, but think / Thy Life then ransomed mine, my God, my God.