All this I knew--crumbling colossi and river and sand and sun and brazen sky--was to pass away in the twinkling of an eye.

At any moment the trumps of the archangels might sound, the stars fall out of the sky, the heavens roll up as a scroll, and the Lord God of all come with his hosts for the final judgment.
Ah, I knew it so profoundly that I was ready for such sublime event.

That was why I was here in rags and filth and wretchedness.

I was meek and lowly, and I despised the frail needs and passions of the flesh.

And I thought with contempt, and with a certain satisfaction, of the far cities of the plain I had known, all unheeding, in their pomp and lust, of the last day so near at hand.