[Editor: This poem by Mary Eliza Fullerton was published in Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics (1908).]
Judas
Most sad of spirits in the land of ghosts
His soul the unquiet memories ever toss,
Whip him with iterations of his loss,
And urge him restless to the farthest coasts
That bound the First Estate of the dim hosts;
So yet unshriven of his sin and dross,
He seeks the mortal gate where at their posts
Earth’s guardians turn him trembling with his cross.
And the stern seraphs that stand sentinel
At higher doors, when meek his weary wraith
Would seek to pass with fiery swords repel,
And keep him still upon the plane beneath
With souls just issued from the Body’s death:
And Satan waves him from the gates of hell.
Source:
Mary E. Fullerton, Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics, Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1908, p. 17
Editor’s notes:
dross = rubbish; something of little or no worth, worthless
seraph = an angel (one of the Seraphim), regarded as a highly-ranked order of angel (the Seraphim are mentioned in the Bible, in Isaiah 6: “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne … Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings”)
wraith = something insubstantial, shadowy, or vaporous; an apparition or ghostlike image of someone, especially one that appears shortly before someone’s death; a ghost
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