Page:Roden Noel - A Little Child's Monument - 1881.pdf/90

As erst your joys, so now your sorrows fine
I scatter with cold scorn!
All ye shall jeer at your own oath
Of infinite fidelity;
Ye shall forswear yourselves, and be to both
Heaven and earth, and your own selves a mockery!
Poor fool! I will extinguish every ember,
Love, hope, grief, all remaining of you yet!
Yea, though thou vow to God thou wilt remember.
Thou shalt forget!"

And I replied to Time:
"Thou shalt abolish me,
Ere thou dissolve all sanctities sublime
Of mine own being; when I perish utterly,
I moan no more in pain, nor lie foredone,
Self-scorned, a hissing to white orbs that roll,
Flawless, annealed, obedient to their sun.
If thou hast plunged in night his precious soul,
How wilt thou hinder me
From taking sanctuary
In that eternal gloom from woe and shame?
A holiest Altar, if the child who was all free from blame
Be lying mute before
The dim grey stone of Silence, cold for evermore!
Ah! there I shall be free
From pain, from sin, from folly, and from thee!