After her burnings! The bare tree in time
Shoots with her leaves; and once more are her boughs
Curved by the germen of the fruits.
While then
The world throughout is trembling at God’s voice,
180 And deeply moved are the high air’s powers,
Then comes a crash unwonted, then ensue
Heaven’s mightiest murmurs, on the approach of God,
The whole world’s Judge! His countless ministers
Forthwith conjoin their rushing march, and God
185 With majesty supernal fence around.
Angelic bands will from the heaven descend
To earth; all, God’s host, whose is faculty
Divine; in form and visage spirits all
Of virtue: in them fiery vigour is;
190 Rutilant are their bodies; heaven’s might
Divine about them flashes; the whole orb
Hence murmurs; and earth, trembling to her depths
(Or whatsoe’er her bulk is), echoes back
The roar, parturient of men, whom she,
195 Being bidden, will with grief upyield. All stand
In wonderment. At last disturbed are
The clouds, and the stars move and quake from height
Of sudden power. When thus God comes, with voice
Of potent sound, at once throughout all realms
200 The sepulchres are burst, and every ground
Outpours bones from wide chasms, and opening sand
Outbelches living peoples; to the hair
The members cleave; the bones inwoven are
With marrow; the entwined sinews rule
205 The breathing bodies; and the veins ’gin throb
With simultaneously infused blood:
And, from their caves dismissed, to open day
Souls are restored, and seek to find again
Each its own organs, as at their own place
210 They rise. O wondrous faith! Hence every age
Shoots forth; forth shoots from ancient dust the host
Of dead. Regaining light, there rise again
Mothers, and sires, and high-souled youths, and boys,
And maids unwedded; and deceased old men
215 Stand by with living souls; and with the cries
Of babes the groaning orb resounds. Then tribes
Various from their lowest seats will come:
Bands of the Easterns; those which earth’s extreme
Sees; those which dwell in the downsloping clime