Page:Roden Noel - A Little Child's Monument - 1881.pdf/24

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NIGHT AND MORNING.
7

As in spring the leaflet,
Or young flower awaking,
Wooed by the warm South …
… A calm saint on a pinnacle
Smiles in the day-dawn;
Monumental marble
With warm life-blood glows,
Sweet small singers warble
"Live! live! live!"
And lo! a rush of angels,
A cloud of spirits bright
From soft sun-rays of opal,
Woven to nests of light,
Among celestial branchings
Of the embowered height,
Bear me back my darling,
Smiling, rosed, alive,
Alive! alive! alive!
They only meant to scare me,
All was but in play;
The dismal shades were angels
From my Father's day;
Our Father knows why we must weep;
He wipes our tears away.

But if a hair might perish
From his sweet tendrilled head,
God would be the devil,