Habakkuk, Chap. Iii Poem by Charles Tompson

O, for a beam, from Sion's sacred hill,
Of inspiration! then my soaring muse
Would wake, with hope, her bold aspiring lyre
To notes of rapture! Such the seer inspired,
Whose holy strains essayed to paint his God!

“Perfection, indefinitude supreme!
Let not thy direful wrath for ever blaze,
But Mercy's gentle voice arrest its power;
Here let me sing, in bold seraphic notes,
How keen, on favoured Israel's heathen foes,
The fatal arrows of thy vengeance fell!

“I saw and trembled;—while transcendant rays,
Shot from the Majesty divine, illumed
Heaven's canopy and earth's remotest verge;
Refulgent Teman beamed ethereal fire,
And lofty Paran owned the present God.
Before his glorious form the baleful plague
(Dire harbinger of wrath!) and igneous flame
Swept o'er the guilty land. Supreme he stood;
All comprehensive, o'er the subject world,
His eye terrific rolled, at one full gaze
Including Earth e'en to her utmost bourne,
Awful he frowned, and, with a potent arm,
Dispersed the warring nations; mount on mount
He hurled; Earth shook, and Ocean trembling heaved,
Cushan's bright valleys felt the shock divine,
And Midian's limits in affliction wept.
Thy bow was bent;—the Earth submissive yawned,
And foaming rivers rushed impetuous in.
Mountains beheld, and tottered to their base;
Fix'd in yon shining arch, the radiant sun,
The pallid moon, and all the starry host
Forgot their circling orbits, and stood still.
In indignation just, thro' Earth's dull realms,
Thy blazing chariot rolled, and flames of wrath
Flashed from thy world-compelling eye on heaven!

“These marked the tender parent—these the God!
These rained destruction o'er his people's foes,
But these saved Israel, and released his flock!

“What, tho' no more the fig her fruits diffuse,
No more the luscious vine her nectar yields,
No more the press with streaming oil o'erflow;
Tho' fade the pastures and the flocks decay?
Still shall my bursting heart with rapture swell,
Still to my God, its grateful homage pour,”
And dwell, with hope, on joys that bloom in heaven,
The pilgrim's goal—the sinner's home of peace,
Where all is bright, and Love Eternal reigns!