His voice was very sweet, a silvery stream
Of music, rippling softly through my life--
And ne'er to hear his little prattling tongue,
Stumbling upon the threshold steps of speech,
Catching quaint sounds and fragments of discourse,
And setting them to childish uses straight--
I've sat and heard him by the hour--you'd wonder
To hear his little saws and sentences,
And now to think I'll hear him never more--
Alack! alack!--but no, it is not true--
The child is sleeping--Ay! it must be so.
What know you, Father, of an infant's sleep?
You, in your stony cell 'mid shaven friars,
All crowding down the nether side of life,
Hearing no sweeter voice than matin-bells,
No speech, but grace in cold refectories;
Ay! thence it is--Oh fool! that I should doubt!
'Tis so--'tis so--I knew that I should pluck
The cowl from your delusion--Is't not so?

MONK.

Oh son, your woful faith moves all my heart.
'Tis pitiful! but see you not the blood
That hotly streaks your sleeping lily there?
See how it laces all his garments o'er,
And signs the grievous sentence of your joy.

LLEWELLYN.