Awful Thought Of Endless Doom!

For Second Advent, Ascension

Words: Sensus quis horror percutit? Latin Hymn by Jean Baptiste de Santeüil (1630-1697), Cluniac Breviary, 1686, with notes
Translated by Robert Campbell, St. Andrews Hymns and Anthems (1850), p. 78.
Altered in O. Shipley's Annus Sanctus, 1884, as Fearful Thought Of Endless Doom.

Source: George Radcliffe Woodward, ed, Songs of Syon (London: Schott & Co., Third Edition, 1908), #7

1. Awful thought of endless doom!
Skies are rent, the Judge is come:
Clouds his throne; around him stand
Angel guards, a countless band.

2. Hark, the voice from shore to shore
Tells that time shall be no more:
See the dead from dust arise,
Flurried to the last assize.

3. On his right are placed the just;
To his left the wicked thrust:
Well to him are sinners known,
Quickly sever’d from his own.

4. These a blest retreat have won,
Who had learn’d earth’s joys to shun:
Chose for him the pain and loss,
Follow’d him who bore the Cross

5. Cross, from which the Hebrew turn’d;
Cross, by haughty Gentile spurn’d;
Thee with joy the righteous see,
But the lost with agony.

6. Deeper still their shame and dread,
Seeing him whose blood they shed:
Lord, from sin thy people keep,
Lest its dreadful fruit they reap.

7. Mingling joy with holy fear,
Praise we him whose day is near:
Bless alike the Father’s Name,
And the Spirit’s praise proclaim. Amen.

Sheet Music to the tune by Rev. F. A. J. Hervey, The Hymnary (1872), #316, p. 284.
Morning Hymn for the Sunday After Ascension Day

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