He will be heard no more: his song
Won’t speak to friends he’s left behind
Until the trumpet can unwind,
And that trump’s reverberation
Penetrates through all creation,
Opens the graves of all the dead,
Wakens us who long since bled
Present for judgment in the form
Perished in ashes, now grown warm.
Death will grieve to understand
And finish itself with its own hand
And those who deal us doles of time
Will bang the earth with their useless chime.
The sun will faint from sudden fear.
The face of the moon will be covered with gore.
Thrown from heaven by foul disease
Terrified stars will fall and freeze.
The earth’s foundations will jerk, and rocks
Like sea waves, give each other knocks.
All human craft, all human deeds
Will be burnt up like moorland weeds.
Haughty castles and cities will fall
And worldly pomp find a dusty pall.
Vain things, extravagance, delights
Will disappear under the thickest of nights.
The world will shudder then and wear,
For its own self, its mourning gear.

Translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer