[Previous: lines 968-980]
John narrates what Jesus has told him about the end of the world.
Addidit et ventura canens, fore, cùm vagus olim------------
sol claram speciem concreto lumine tectus
exuat; et subitò stellanti nocte perempta
sufficiat nullam luna orbi argentea lucem,
sanguineis faciem maculis perfusa nigrantem; [985]
praecipitentque polo passim turbata labanti
sidera, quae lapsu certo, spatiove feruntur;
Visque ea, quae cœli irrequietos conciet orbes,
desinat, incerto rapiantur ut omnia motu;
atque prope avulso absiliat de cardine mundus: [990]
dum terras, veluti rapidum per inania fulmen,
ipse iterum petat, et multis cum millibus idem
adveniens, hominum vitas, et crimina quaerat.
Ut res promisso simul ac succenderit igni
flammarum totum tempestas sparsa per orbem; [995]
continuô tellure nova, caeloque recenti
defunctas animas vitâ in sua corpora rursus
evocet ad blandum lumen, populosque sepulcris
eliciat, secumque pios educat ad astra,
quos pater à prima praevidit origine rerum [1000]
mente suos fore, et aethereo transcripsit Olympo;
ibunt aligeri iuvenes, cœlumque profundum
horrifico sonitu implebunt, atque œre recurvo
quatuor à ventis excibuntundique gentes.
Iudicis ad solium properabitur aethere toto. [1005]
Ipse altè effultus, montisque in vertice summo
arbiter effulgens circumferet ora tremenda:
secernetque pios, dextraque in parte locabit;
laeva autem coget sontes, quae plurima turba.
Qualis post hyemem exactam, cùm gramine molli [1010]
pascua laeta vocant stabulis armenta reclusis,
ipse greges pastor nitidos missurus in agros
sortitur: placidas primô legit ille bidentes
dinumerans; olidasque iubet procul esse capellas.
Cernere erit liquidas longè fulgere per auras [1015]
corpora clara hominum; quibus atrae obnoxia morti
abluet omnipotens Pater; aeternumque manebunt
ampliùs haud rerum subiecti casibus ullis.
Nemo illam ante diem speret cum corpore sedes
aetheris, exceptis paucis, quos ipse sepulcro [1020]
exurgens secum superis Deus invehet oris:
solae animae interea tali satione fruentur.
Contrà autem sontes tenebris ac nocte prementur
aeternâ, et meritas pendent per secula pœnas.
He spoke of the future, when the fugitive------------
sun, murkily veiling its light, will shed
its lustre in starry skies, and suddenly
the moon will extinguish its silver light
leaving only black-bloody spots on its face. [985]
Hurled hard from their determined courses all
the stars will tumble through a trembling sky.
The force that turns heaven’s never-resting orbs
will stop, and chaos jar nature’s workings.
The cosmos will unhinge itself and nearly send [990]
earth rolling through the void of space,
until—judging millions for their lives and deeds—
he returns to earth as a bolt of lightning.
Then, when the promised flames have spread, a
firestorm consuming the whole of the world, [995]
there will come a new earth and a new heaven,
summoning defunct souls back to their bodies,
recalling all the people of the tomb
to the light, lifting the pious to the stars
(the Father foresaw this from the beginning [1000]
of the world) writing their names in Olympus.
Winged angels will fill the depths of heaven
with terrifying noise from their curved trumpets
and all four races of men will come for judgment.
All hurry to the throne of heaven’s judge. [1005]
On high, supported by a great mountain,
he shines forth his judgment, gazing about,
separating the good on his right hand,
but most, set on his left, will be offenders:
as when, at winter’s end, the soft grasses [1010]
call forth the beasts from their stalls to pasture
and the farmer send them out, dividing
them, first counting out the gentle sheep
and keeping back the rank-smelling she-goats.
So will be seen, bright through the flowing air [1015]
the bodies of men; purged of obnoxious death
and corruption by the Father, forever
beyond the depredations of chance or change.
But let none expect their body will go
to heaven, save those few he himself will lift [1020]
up from the grave at his resurrection.
Only such souls will enjoy that distinction.
As for the guilty, they’re sent to endless night,
eternally punished as they deserve.
Line 997’s defunctus means ‘done with, performed, deceased, defunct’, and I’d say the latter word kind-of works in an English sense here, if only kind-of. Although, of course, and at the same time, the aim is to estrange a little, or what’s the point in what I'm doing?
The ‘four races of mankind’ reference in line 1004 is not the 19th-C racism that divided humanity into ‘White, Black, Yellow and Red’ (that is, Caucasian, Negro, Asian and American-Indian), but an older paradigm first laid-out by Ephorus of Cyme in his Universal History, where the world’s population is divided into four racially distinct groups: ‘northerners’, ‘westerners’, ‘southerners’ and ‘easterners’ (for comparison, Aristotle thought humanity divided into three races: “Scythians, Egyptians, and Thracians”, all of which says something about how unscientific and arbitrary the concept of race is).
‘Olympus’ in line 1001 is, as we've seen many times before in this poem, Vida's classicizing way of referring to the Christian heaven. Gardner translates this line: ‘inscribes their names in his celestial book’ which is perfectly logical, although Vida has many other words for ‘heaven’ and ‘celestial’ (indeed, he uses two of those alternatives in this very passage: coelum in line 1002, aether in 1001) and it seems to me worthwhile both to maintain the distinction and not to lose sight of that fact that Vida is indeed, by design, classicizing Christian myth. The ‘he’ of line 1020 is Christ, although that's probably clear enough from the context.
Otherwise, this passage is versified from what scholars call ‘the Synoptic Apocalypse’, or sometimes the ‘Olivet Discourse’: which is to say those bits of the Gospels that look forward to the end of the world (as opposed to, eg, the Revelation of St John). So for instance:
Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”Related passages can be found at Mark 13:1-37 and Luke 21:5-36. One thing Vida doesn’t include is Mark 13:30: ‘this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.’ Since it’s a safe bet all of the generation of which Jesus was speaking have long since passed away, this verse poses certain problems to the literalist Bible reader (C S Lewis called it ‘the most embarrassing verse in the Bible’ [Lewis, The World's Last Night and Other Essays (1960), 180]). From my, admittedly patchy, reading amongst modern theologians and scholars of the Bible, the consensus seems to be: Jesus's historical ministry probably was eschatological, which is to say, he probably did go around promising an imminent end-of-the-world, just as his former master John the Baptist (probably) did. But after his death, his followers had to accomodate their burgeoning movement to the non-arrival of this apocalypse, and adjusted their holy texts accordingly by selection, suppression and a little light re-writing to downplay the eschatological, and upvote the baptismal, community-practical/ethical and spiritual, side of what Jesus preached. Such a process, not being undertaken with a Stalinist ruthlessness or centralised control, inevitably left little oddments here and there in the record (as it were); although nothing that generations of devout Christians have found to be an actual impediment to their belief.
Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”
And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
… “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. [Matthew 24:1-31]
The end of the world still calls to us, of course; now more than ever, perhaps. The apocalyptic image at the head of the post is John Martin's enormous canvas The Great Day of His Wrath (1851–3), presently in the Tate, whose website says:
This is the third picture in Martin's great triptych, known as the Judgement Series. Along with the other two vast panels, The Last Judgement and The Plains of Heaven (Tate T01927 and T01928) ... Of all Martin's biblical scenes, this presents his most cataclysmic vision of destruction, featuring an entire city being torn up and thrown into the abyss. ... Martin follows the biblical description closely, but adds his own sensational effects. A blood-red glow casts an eerie light over the scene. The mountains are transformed into rolling waves of solid rock, crushing any buildings that lie in their wake. Lightning splits the giant boulders which crash towards the dark abyss, and groups of helpless figures tumble inexorably towards oblivion.[Next: lines 1025-1047]
The three pictures in the triptych became famous in the years after Martin's death and were toured throughout England and America. They were described as ‘the most sublime and extraordinary pictures in the world valued at 8000 guineas’ [Wilson, Tate Gallery: an illustrated companion (London 1990), 76]. Many mezzotints of the pictures were sold, but the vastness and theatricality of Martin's visions now appeared outmoded to the mid-Victorians, and the paintings themselves failed to find a buyer. By the twentieth century, Martin's work had fallen into obscurity and he became known as ‘Mad Martin’. In 1935 the triptych was sold for seven pounds and the separate panels dispersed. It was reunited by the Tate in 1974.
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