The Death of Sapphira

Sapphira, Sapphira, awake!
Alas! she is gone in the sleep
That but the archangel can break;
For life hath no slumber so deep.

'T is death! his pale ashes are cast
On those withered lips, where but now
An insult to Heaven was passed;
His dumbness hath followed the vow.

A bolt from above, swift and sure,
Hath blasted the pride of the clay;
The spirit, in boldness secure,
In guilt hath been stricken away.

O child of delusion! to stand
The chosen of Jesus among,
To cover the fraud of thy hand,
By falsehood to him on thy tongue!

How vain, the deceit of the heart
To shroud in a mantle so frail!
Its perfidy, thus by its art,
To think from Omniscience to veil!

Lost woman! but three hours before,
The form of thy partner in sin
Was borne, wan and cold, from the door,
Where thou didst so rashly come in.

And they, who had carried him out,
The clods o'er his bosom to lay,
Were waiting, the threshold about,
To bear thee to darkness away.

Sapphira, could Mercy restore,
Or Pity thy spirit recall,
To light up its dwelling once more,
It should not thus hopelessly fall.

But Mercy besought thee in vain,
From death's awful brink to recede;
To shun the despair and the pain
Where she is forbidden to plead.

And Pity's warm tear-drops must roll
The more, that she cannot relume
The clay whence the self-wounded soul
Hath rushed to a suicide's doom.

How potent, how maddening the love,
O gold, of a mortal must be,
To challenge an arm from above—
To stake earth and heaven for thee!

For Justice to Judgment will call;
And who shall their coming abide,
When wrath the most fearful of all,
"The wrath of the Lamb," is defied?