Chantry’s Sleeping Children:
Lichfield Cathedral

We stand as still as cherubs
With wings poised to bless
Some cherished silence
Or divine tenderness,
As if they had died of innocence
And scarcely a moment had passed
Between their time and ours
Of love and remembrance.

So do you know what love is?
Carved in cool stone, fixed in time,
Indifferent, yet sublime.
Ellen Jane and Marianne
Marbled, motionless,
Holding snowdrops,
Forever fixed in time, dreaming
Of nothing in perfect gravitas.

We linger as our own lives diminish
Shrink to irrelevance,
A thought that hovers in infinite space,
Signifying our humility.