Heaven: The Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity

Nor eye, ear, thought, can take the height
To which my song is taking flight,
Yet raised an humble wing,
My guess of Heaven I’ll sing;
’Tis Love’s reward, and Love is fired
By guessing at the bliss desired.

Guess then at saints’ eternal lot,
By due considering what ’tis not,
No misery, want, or care,
No death, no darkness there,
No troubles, storms, sighs, groans, or tears,
No injury, pains, sickness, fears.

There souls no disappointments meet,
No vanities the choice to cheat,
Nothing that can defile,
No hypocrite, no guile,
No need of prayer, or what implies,
Or absence or vacuities.

There no ill conscience gnaws the breast,
No tempters holy souls infest,
No curse, no weeds, no toil,
No errors to embroil,
No lustful thought can enter in,
Or possibility of sin.

From all vexations here below,
The region of sin, death and woe,
Song, to your utmost stress
Now elevate your guess,
Sing what in sacred lines you read,
Of bliss for pious souls decreed.

They dwell in pure ecstatic light,
Of God Triune have blissful sight,
Of Fontal Love, who gave
God Filial, man to save;
Of Jesus’ Love, who death sustain’d,
By which the saints their glory gain’d;

Of Love co-breathed the boundless Source,
From which saints’ love derives its force,
Within the gracious shine
Of the co-glorious Trine,
The saints in happy mansions rest,
Of all they can desire possess’d.

Saints’ bodies there the sun outvie
Temper’d to feel the joys on high,
Bright body and pure mind,
In rapture unconfined,
Capacities expand, till fit
Deluge of Godhead to admit.

In all-sufficient bliss they joy,
Duration in sweet hymns employ;
With angels they converse,
Their loves and joys rehearse,
Taste suavities of Love immense,
Of all delights full confluence.

With God’s own Son they reign co-heirs,
Each saint with Him in glory shares,
Like Godhead, happy, pure,
Against all change secure,
In boundless joys they sabbatise,
Which Love Triune will eternise.

By boundless Love, for souls refined,
Are joys unspeakable design’d,
When I those joys imbibe,
I then may them describe;
Joys to full pitch will hymn excite,
When from sensation I endite.