Page:Roden Noel - A Little Child's Monument - 1881.pdf/142

 Should shame and shatter such infernal art! If He be lord who builds it, we will not Worship, in how fierce fires soe'er our lot He appoint for our rebellion! but I deem 'Tis only fever that so makes it seem!

Interminable armies ever wend O'er maimed and martyred comrades to their end Of blind, unused extinction, tho' the hope Of infinite Love and Justice while they grope Be kindled in their bosoms for a lure, Fooling their hearts the torture to endure Of false life longer, ere immersed in night They feed some monstrous Blossom on the height Of this infernal column of a world: For it their souls one refuse-heap were hurled, Bleeding and writhing, to annihilation, For some sleek mortal god to inhale oblation Of waste breaths, wrung from sentient agony, A vampire draining life of these who die! So that fierce carnage, cast in foemen's bronze. Mounts serpentine to swell Napoleon's Inhuman triumph, whose proud solitude Stands pillared, purpled with the people's blood!

The hecatomb of myriadfold dumb lives Invokes a clinging curse on Him who thrives From their long torture; inarticulate calls