Armageddon

I’VE seen the Angel pour the sixth gold bowl
Off toward the great Euphrates, and I’ve seen
The unclean spirits issue from the Beast,
The Dragon, and the mouth of him who posed
As Prophet — they who’ve led the whole wide world
‘Together to the war of the Great Day’;
For I have been in Armageddon’s vale,
The Judgment Place, which John of Patmos saw
In his Apocalypse. — There have I walked;
There seen the Dragon’s bayoneted tongue;
There gotten this Beast blood-splotch on my boot;
There heard the Teuton-Baal Prophet cry
His blasphemy to stir a Holy War;
There seen the Allied Men on horses ride,
Guided by ‘eyes that were as flame of fire.’
Swift as these flaming eagles did they ride;
Swifter than Barak from Mt. Tabor’s slopes
Rushing upon this plain; swifter than they
Of Gideon’s band who swept upon Jezreel
From Mount Gilboa fronting this dread field,
Where kings and emperors through centuries
Have perished since the dewless, rainless days
When these same circling mountains mourned for Saul
And Jonathan, whom death could not divide.
Stronger than lions of the wilderness
Were they, these sons of lions of the isles,
Smiting with all the righteous wrath of God,
Striking with all the summoned might of right.

And after this sixth Angel had passed on,
On over Jordan to the desert’s edge,
And still beyond to Bagdad’s blistered roofs,
Till all the blazing lava had been poured,
And Prophet, Dragon, Beast were taken all,
I saw another ‘standing in the sun’
At setting over Armageddon’s vale,
Calling ‘the birds that in mid-heaven fly’
To come together to the supper spread,
The great, grim supper of the Mighty God,
Out on the plain from Kishon to Beisan,
Where there was neither cloth, nor flower, nor lamp,
Nor plate, nor knife — only the pecking beak
And tearing claw and hov’ring sable wing.

That night I walked all night upon the plain,
Whose loam was soft and grateful to my feet
Sore from the harshness of Samaria’s hills —
Soft as the loam of that far prairie farm
I’d ploughed long, long ago; and black as that,
But black with tinge of crimson from the hills.
All night I walked alone, save for the dead
Begging for burial — these and the gulping birds.
No sound was there except of my own steps,
Or now and then the scratching at my knees
Of brambles of Abimelech’s ill-rule,
Or braying of the beast of Issachar
Between the sheepfolds, couching at his ease;
For dumbing death had stalked ahead of me.

Then toward the dawn there shone a wondrous sign,
Such as Sir Bedivere when Arthur died
Beheld. From out Gilboa’s rugged side
(Where Gideon had cried, ‘Jehovah’s sword,’
And put to flight the hosts of Midian,
And Saul had seen the gleaming scimitar,
The Witch of Endor’s presage of his fate)
Was thrust what seemed a crescent Damask sword;
The color of dried blood upon a blade.
Slowly, as slowly as a rising star,
’T was lifted upward by an unseen hand
Until the coming of the morning light
Did hide it in a jeweled sheath as rich
And brilliant as an Arab ever wore.
I knew it was the dying, horned moon;
But had a sword been hanging in the sky,
’T were not more like a sword than this red moon
That shone in symbol of its drawing forth,
And then its sheathing in the new Earth-Peace.
There were the hideous wreckages of war;
There things lay stark that yesterday were men;
Naught else to tell that Armageddon’s day
Had come — had come and gone!

And now there stood,
In clear command of all the placid plain,
The Mount on which He’d taught the world to pray,
And where He’d breathed into immortal life
The words of his divine Beatitudes,
Blessing those valiant ones who’d fought for peace
And now were called by Him the ‘Sons of God.’

Pausing to look at this e’er-haloed height,
I heard the sound of sacramental bells,
Or so they seemed, but were the desert, chimes
Borne by the camels of a caravan
Bringing the answer of the Tabor prayer
To those who prayed, ‘Give us our daily bread.’
Across my pathway to the Nazareth
That was the village of the Prince of Peace
They passed.
The ‘ thousand years ’ had been begun.