Be Domes Daege, De Die Judicii

1876. The opening passage of the poem tells how, as the author sat lonely within a bower in a wood where the streams murmured among pleasant plants, a wind suddenly arose that stirred the trees and darkened the sky, so that his mind was troubled, and he began to sing of the coming of death. He describes how he wept and lay upon the earth, beating his breast for sorrow, and he calls upon all his fellow sinners to confess their sins with tears and to throw themselves of the mercy of Christ. Then comes another highly imaginative passage, describing the terrors that will foretell the second advent. All the earth shaketh, and the hills also quiver and fall; the gates of the mountains bend and melt, and the terrible tumult of the stormy sea fearfully frights the minds of men. Then the Lord shall come with hosts of angels, the sins of all shall be revealed and fire shall consume the unrepentant. The poem ends with a passage, partly borrowed from the Latin, on the joys of the redeemed. They shall be numbered in heaven among the angels, and there, amidst clusters of red roses, shall shine for ever. A throng of virgin souls shall wander there, garlanded with flowers, led by that most blessed of maidens who bore the Lord on earth. Considered to be one of the best translations in Olde English.