Sunday Before Advent

The end of all things is at hand. We all

Stand in the balance trembling as we stand;

Or if not trembling, tottering to a fall.

The end of all things is at hand.

 

O hearts of men, covet the unending land!

O hearts of men, covet the musical,

Sweet, never-ending waters of that strand!

 

While Earth shows poor, a slippery rolling ball,

And Hell looms vast, a gulf unplumbed, unspanned,

And Heaven flings wide its gates to great and small,

The end of all things is at hand.

I have shared poems by Victorian poet Christina Rossetti before. Many are religious in nature though she also wrote a wide selection of secular verse. The one above is clearly of the former type, yet it is possible for anyone, no matter what their beliefs, to gain something from 'Sunday Before Advent.'

Consider the opening proposition, 'The end of all things is at hand' which is repeated twice again. You don't have to be a Christian to take a note of the state of the world and the kind of pleasures that blind people to how dire things are becoming. Money, technology, distraction of all kinds are leading the human race into seriously dangerous territory, the withdrawal into ideologically squabbling tribes only compounding matters. It's not that having things and wanting things are bad in themselves, but the elevation of the material into the realm of the 'only good' puts them out of balance, creating a new kind of slave class.

Do they know if they are 'tottering' or 'trembling'? I don't know.