"I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, when later I
return, to those that yesterday were children. And in all ways time has
marred, and living has defaced, and prudence has maimed, until I grieve
to entrust that which I bring to what remains of that which yesterday I
brought. In the old days children were sacrificed to a brazen burning
god, but time affects more subtile hecatombs: for Moloch slew outright.
Yes, Moloch, being divine, killed as the dog kills, furiously, but time
is that transfigured cat, an ironist. So living mars and defaces and
maims, and living appears wantonly to soil and to degrade its prey
before destroying it.
"I bring the children, stainless and dear and helpless, and I leave them
to endure that which is fated. Daily I bring into this world the beauty
and innocence and high-heartedness and faith of children: but life has
no employment, or else life has no sustenance, for these fine things
which I bring daily, for always I, returning, find the human usages of
living have extinguished these excellences in those who yesterday were
children, and that these virtues exist in no aged person.
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