The last great Day it may be near,
Or Man may pass ere it comes here.
There may be nothing but weeds and flowers
Over the Earth in her dying hours;
Men, beasts and birds may all be gone
Ere the world's disaster shall come on;
Or there may be neither grass nor trees,
But stony wastes round the ashen seas —
No life to take when the days are dead,
And God is doing the thing He said;
Nothing but Desolation's wing
Like a sunless mist o'er everything!
And all the millions long, long gone,
To ashes turned in Oblivion;
And the last great Day shall but consume
The bones of a world in its fiery tomb,
As God puts by for ever and aye
The thought of the sorrow that's passed away!