Fantastic Metropolis

ANGEL: Your patience is no longer needed, soul,
       For we are in the highest air of all,
       Where all is rarified and pure.
       These are the highest bounds of heav’n,
       Where lives the highest one of all.

SOUL: And now I feel myself drawn up
       As if by a power beyond my comprehension.
       A strange convulsion grips my senses,
       A delirium of glory!
       I feel that I have come at last
       Unto the place where I will meet my Lord.
       For this moment was I first created,
       And spent my earthly life so long ago.
       A golden shape before my eyes I see,
       And I know now that I’m approaching Thee!

CHOIR OF ANGELICALS: Praise to the God of ages past,
       Praise to the Lord today,
       Who made both heav’n and earth and hell,
       To help in ev’ry way.
       Who sent his only son to us
       To labour and to toil,
       To spend his life in earthly pain
       Old Satan’s plans to foil.
       Who rules above in glorious might,
       With Christ at his right hand,
       And spreads his waves of gorgeous pain
       All over this fair land.

ANGEL: Brothers! Hist! The soul I see
       Descends from the high throne
       In pain and wrapp’d in misery,
       The judgement now is done.

SOUL: Stand back, O Angels, touch not me,
       My pain I cannot tell,
       For down I go with utmost speed,
       To the very depths of Hell.

ANGEL: Brothers, be not thou downcast,
       At this soul’s plight thou must not frown,
       For though this damned soul plunges fast,
       At least we cannot be cast down.

ANGEL OF THE UPPER REGIONS & CHOIR OF ANGELICALS:
       Praise to the God of ages past,
       Praise to the Lord today, etc…

Sleeve notes and translation by Langdon Jones.