But an eternal now shall ever last. 
    Though time shall be no more, yet space shall give
    A nobler theatre to love and live
    The winged courier then no more shall claim
    The power to sink or raise the notes of Fame,
    Or give its glories to the noontide ray: 
    True merit then, in everlasting day,
    Shall shine for ever, as at first it shone
    At once to God and man and angels known. 
    Happy are they who in this changing sphere
    Already have begun the bright career
    That reaches to the goal which, all in vain,
    The Muse would blazon in her feeble strain: 
    But blest above all other blest is he
    Who from the trammels of mortality,
    Ere half the vital thread ran out, was free,
    Mature for Heaven; where now the matchless fair
    Preserves those features, that seraphic air,
    And all those mental charms that raised my mind,
    To judge of heaven while yet on earth confined. 
    That soft attractive glance that won my heart
    When first my bosom felt unusual smart,
    Now beams, now glories, in the realms above,
    Fed by the eternal source of light and love. 
    Then shall I see her as I first beheld,
    But lovelier far, and by herself excell’d;
    And I distinguish’d in the bands above
    Shall hear this plaudit in the choirs of love:—­
    “Lo! this is he who sung in mournful strains
    For many years a lover’s doubts and pains;
    Yet in this soul-expanding, sweet employ,
    A sacred transport felt above all vulgar joy.” 
    She too shall wonder at herself to hear
    Her praises ring around the radiant sphere: 
    But of that hour it is not mine to know;
    To her, perhaps, the period of my woe
    Is manifest; for she my fate may find
    In the pure mirror of the eternal mind. 
    To me it seems at hand a sure presage,
    Denotes my rise from this terrestrial stage;
    Then what I gain’d and lost below shall lie
    Suspended in the balance of the sky,
    And all our anxious sublunary cares
    Shall seem one tissue of Arachne’s snares;
    And all the lying vanities of life,
    The sordid source of envy, hate, and strife,
    Ignoble as they are, shall then appear
    Before the searching beam of truth severe;
    Then souls, from sense refined, shall see the fraud
    That led them from the living way of God. 
    From the dark dungeon of the human breast
    All direful secrets then shall rise confess’d,
    In honour multiplied—­a dreadful show
    To hierarchies above, and saints below. 
    Eternal reason then shall give her doom;
    And, sever’d wide, the tenants of the tomb
    Shall seek their portions with instinctive haste,
    Quick as the savage speeds along the waste. 
    Then shall the golden hoard its trust betray,
    And they, that, mindless of