The Sweet Age

The English-born Irish writer, Lionel Johnson (1867-1902) cooperated with William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) in developing a Joachimist-style doctrine of a forthcoming third age of the Spirit. Based on a famous passage in Joachim of Fiore’s Liber Concordie, Johnson’s poem Vita Venturi Saeculi (1902) concentrates, unusually for this genre, on the sweetness of the third status (age):

Be glad with beauty, white with perfect grace,
Sweet Age to come, whose face
Dawns dimly in our prophesying eyes
Eager with good surmise! …

Sweet Age to come, whose wings are of white fire,
Deny not our desire;
O kingdom of the Spirit, conquering all
Take willing earth in Thrall!
Let green woods wave thee welcome, and blue seas
Laugh welcome, and each breeze
Be sacred incense round thee: peace appear
Through crystal atmosphere,
Impassioned, perdurable, omnipotent;
Given by God, not lent,
Foretaste of Heaven, ere heaven be all in all,
Come to the vexed world’s call; …

Sweet Age to come, declare the doctrine clear;
We wait thee now, wait here!
Sweet Age to come, upon our ready ground
Let lily and rose abound,
With pure supremacy of fragrant state
Sweetening this world of hate,
Which does the wrongs, it knows not, and it knows;
Plant thou thy lily and rose!