Page:Poems (IA poemsthomrich).pdf/67

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A JUDGMENT IN HEAVEN.[1]

Athwart the sod which is treading for God * the poet paced with his splendid eyes;
Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father of Paradise,
Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of intertangled relucent dyes.

The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild wings rustled his guides' cymars)
Looked up from disport at the passing comer, * as they pelted each other with handfuls of stars;
And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose, * hand on sword, by their tethered cars.

With plumes night-tinctured englobed and cinctured, * of Saints, his guided steps held on
To where on the far crystalline pale * of that transtellar Heaven there shone
The immutable crocean dawn * effusing from the Father's Throne.

  1. Note—I have throughout this poem used an asterisk to indicate the caesura in the middle of the line, after the manner of the old Saxon section-point.