The Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand: <br />Its storms roll up the sky: <br />The nations sleep starving on heaps of gold; <br />All dreamers toss and sigh; <br />The night is darkest before the morn; <br />When the pain is sorest the child is born, <br />And the Day of the Lord at hand. <br /> <br />Gather you, gather you, angels of God- <br />Freedom, and Mercy, and Truth; <br />Come! for the Earth is grown coward and old, <br />Come down, and renew us her youth. <br />Wisdom, Self-Sacrifice, Daring, and Love, <br />Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above, <br />To the Day of the Lord at hand. <br /> <br />Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell- <br />Famine, and Plague, and War; <br />Idleness, Bigotry, Cant, and Misrule, <br />Gather, and fall in the snare! <br />Hireling and Mammonite, Bigot and Knave, <br />Crawl to the battle-field, sneak to your grave, <br />In the Day of the Lord at hand. <br /> <br />Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold, <br />While the Lord of all ages is here? <br />True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God, <br />And those who can suffer, can dare. <br />Each old age of gold was an iron age too, <br />And the meekest of saints may find stern work to do, <br />In the Day of the Lord at hand. <br /> <br /> <br />On the Torridge, Devonshire, <br />September 10, 1849.<br /><br />Charles Kingsley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-day-of-the-lord/
