APOCALYPSE
Reading edition
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away.”—Apoc. xxi. I.
By Theodore Maynard
Shall summer wood where we have laughed our fill; Shall all your grass so good to walk upon; Each field that we have loved, each little hill, Be burnt like paper—as hath said Saint John? Then not alone they die! For God hath told How all His plains of mingled fire and glass, His walls of hyacinth, His streets of gold, His aureoles of jewelled light shall pass, That He may make us nobler things that these, And in her royal robes of blazing red Adorn His bride. Yea, with what mysteries And might and mirth shall she be diamonded.
And what new secrets shall our God disclose; Or set what suns of burnished brass to flare; Or what empurpled bloom to oust the rose; Or what strange grass to glow like angels’ hair! What pinnacles of silvery tracery, What dizzy, rampired towers shall God devise Of topaz, beryl and chalcedony To make Heaven pleasant to His children’s eyes! And in what cataclysms of flame and foam Shall the first Heaven sink—as red as sin— When God hath cast aside His ancient home As far too mean to house His children in.