(Art thou a coward? No.) The coward flies; Thinks, but thinks slightly; asks, but fears to know; Asks, "What is truth?" with Pilate; and retires; Dissolves the court, and mingles with the throng; Asylum sad! from reason, hope, and heaven! Shall all, but man look out with ardent eye, For that great day, which was ordain'd for man? O day of consummation! mark supreme 250 (If men are wise) of human thought! nor least, Or in the sight of angels, or their King! Angels, whose radiant circles, height o'er height, Order o'er order, rising, blaze o'er blaze, As in a theatre, surround this scene, Intent on man, and anxious for his fate. Angels look out for thee; for thee, their Lord, 257 To vindicate his glory; and for thee, Creation universal calls aloud, To disinvolve the moral world, and give To Nature's renovation brighter charms. Shall man alone, whose fate, whose final fate Hangs on that hour, exclude it from his thought? I think of nothing else; I see! I feel it! All nature, like an earthquake, trembling round! All deities, like summer's swarms, on wing! All basking in the full meridian blaze! I see the Judge enthroned! the flaming guard! The volume open'd! open'd every heart! A sunbeam pointing out each secret thought! 270 No patron! intercessor none! now past The sweet, the clement, mediatorial hour! For guilt no plea! to pain, no pause! no bound! Inexorable, all! and all, extreme! Nor man alone; the Foe of God and man, From his dark den, blaspheming, drags his chain, And rears his brazen front, with thunder scarr'd: Receives his sentence, and begins his hell. All vengeance past, now, seems abundant grace: Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll 280 His baleful eyes! he curses whom he dreads; And deems it the first moment of his fall. 'Tis present to my thought!--and yet where is it? Angels can't tell me; angels cannot guess The period; from created beings lock'd In darkness. But the process, and the place, Are less obscure; for these may man inquire. Say, thou great close of human hopes and fears! Great key of hearts! great finisher of fates! Great end! and great beginning! say, Where art thou? Art thou in time, or in eternity? 291 Nor in eternity, nor time, I find thee. These, as two monarchs, on their borders meet, (Monarchs of all elapsed, or unarrived!) As in debate, how best their powers allied, May swell the grandeur, or discharge the wrath, Of Him, whom both their monarchies obey. Time, this vast fabric for him built (and doom'd With him to fall), now bursting o'er his head; His lamp, the sun, extinguish'd; from beneath 300 The frown of hideous darkness, calls his sons From their long slumber; from earth's heaving womb, To second birth! contemporary throng!