Heaven and hell | 5 March 2015

In Competition No. 2887 you were invited to describe your idea of heaven or hell in verse. Nietzsche famously said that in Heaven ‘all the interesting people are missing’ and most of you seemed to agree that paradise might not be all it’s cracked up to be. There’s just space to commiserate with Peter Goulding and John-Paul Marney, who narrowly missed out. The winners take £25; Philip Roe nabs £30.

When the heavenly choir eternal sings a glorious Amen
It’s a certain indication they’re about to start again;
For the singing never ceases in celestial realms above;
And the theme is the imperative for unremitting love.
The classical cantatas are performed by seraphim,
But every hour we blessèd souls all stand up for a hymn.
And a frequent choice for us to sing is hymn 471,
Which Cardinal Newman wrote on earth before his life was done.
This wily Catholic convert always turned a pretty phrase:
‘In all his words most wonderful, most sure in all his ways.’
Like a village congregation or a rowdy football crowd
We sing together slightly out of tune and very loud.
We sinners died repenting to escape eternal fire;
Now we’ve duties unrelenting to assist the  heavenly choir.
We are serving, undeserving, the Almighty in the sky
And our work will never end because we cannot even die.
Philip Roe

 
In this unearthly paradise
Dwell shriven souls, well shorn of vice:
A process of divine inspection
Has deemed them worthy of election.
(Those of faiths they didn’t share
Are thankfully removed elsewhere.)
No flesh without, no brain within
They are not prey to any sin.
Relieved of all the mortal dross
That left them when they passed across,
They feel no hunger, pain or fear
As these are things not suffered here.
It is their longed-for, blessed fate
To stay in this eternal state.
But is it really so perverse
To think hell hardly could be worse?
W.J. Webster

 
Heaven is where those blue remembered hills
And all those happy highways where we went
But, later, thought we’d lost are found again,
And finally made real and permanent;
Where, not a wink too soon and always now,
The ‘I remember house’ is filled with light
As golden sunlight floods each room by day
And moonbeams silver every nook by night;
Where, young and easy, under apple boughs
As happy as the heart is long, I play
And racing heedless, singing like the sea,
Time holds me green forever and a day.