DAY OF THE LORD AT HAND.
By Charles Kingsley
THE day of the Lord is at hand, at hand;
The storms roll up the sky;
A nation sleeps starving on heaps of gold,
While the dreamers toss and sigh.
When the pain is sorest the child is born,
And the day is darkest before the morn
Of the day of the Lord at hand. Gather you, gather you, angels of God;
Chivalry, justice, and truth.
Come, for the earth is grown coward and old;
Come down and renew us her youth!
Freedom, self-sacrifice, mercy, and love,
Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above,
To the day of the Lord at hand. Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell,
Famine and plague and war;
Idleness, bigotry, cant, and misrule
Gather, and fall in the snare!
Hirelings and Mammonites, pedants, and knaves,
Crawl to the battle, or sneak to your graves,
In the day of the Lord at hand. Who would sit and whine for a lost age of gold
While the Lord of all ages is here?
True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,
And those who can suffer can dare.
Each past age of gold was an iron age, too,
And the meekest of saints may find stern work to do
In the day of the Lord at hand.
—Charles Kingsley.