Full version of Brorson's 'balance sheet' poem

Come, heart! draw up your balance sheet

Come, heart! draw up your balance sheet,

Your days on earth list clearly,

Make sure you feel no urge to cheat

Or to omit things merely!

Your sum of deeds upon this earth

To what have they amounted?

Mark, soul secure, all since your birth

God’s register has counted

Though all time passes and is gone,

Will disappear for ever,

What in the course of time you’ve done

Is from you parted never,

For God will judge the world one day

At just a single sitting,

Each deed, word, thought he then will weigh

And mete out what is fitting.

How many foul and evil words

Walk cheerfully together

That are to spite and murder stirred

When damned souls them untether,

Who is it does not feel appalled

By bloody oaths, the swearing

With which one finds both great and small

Infect their speech, uncaring?

How much deceit and guile’s concealed

In heart’s foul hidden chamber,

And fleshly lusts though unrevealed

Still smoulder in great number!

You think that all’s got out the way,

That danger’s been averted;

But God has fixed the final day

When such will be subverted.

It would require, to plot the sum

Of sins seen as offending

Which one (in spite of wrath to come

And that which has no ending)

Commits and then God’s ire can’t stay,

And takes no thought whatever

That unconverted souls one day

Hell’s torment taste forever.

Oh, soul secure! That lives for sure

At this world’s final ending,

A world, like Sodom, so impure

that fire will soon be rending,

You who have wasted time on earth

On foul sins great in number,

And will maybe, at New Year’s birth,

Yourself anew encumber.

Recall, recall how fast they passed

Those other days of mercy!

What if this moment were your last,

Though such a thought accursed be!

Think, if some brief time still be found,

Of what you should be doing –

Your talent’s hidden in the ground

No interest’s accruing!

At mercy’s seat you shall repent

Both humbly and sincerely,

For Jesu’s sake pray God relent

From judging you severely,

The hours of mercy that remain

Make sure you’re better spending,

So at life’s evening you may gain

A sweet and blessed ending!