Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CONSCIENCE, by CHARLES WILLIAM STUBBS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CONSCIENCE, by                    
First Line: I sat alone with my conscience
Last Line: Will be judgment enough for me.
Subject(s): Religion; Theology


I SAT ALONE with my conscience
In a place where time had ceased,
And we talked of my former living
In the land where the years increased;
And I felt I should have to answer
The question it put to me,
And to face the answer and questions
Through all eternity.

The ghosts of forgotten actions
Came floating before my sight,
And things that I thought were dead things
Were alive with terrible might.
And the vision of all my past life
Was an awful thing to face,
Alone with my conscience sitting
In that solemnly silent place.

And I thought of a faraway warning,
Of a sorrow that was to be mine,
In a land that was then the future,
But now is the present time.
And I thought of my former thinking
Of the judgment day to be;
But sitting alone with my conscience
Seemed judgment enough for me.

And I wondered if there was a future
To this land beyond the grave;
But no one gave me an answer,
And no one came to save.
Then I felt that the future was present,
And the present would never go by,
For it was but the thought of my past life
Growing into eternity.

Then I woke from my timely dreaming,
And the vision passed away,
And I knew that the far-off seeming
Was a warning of yesterday;
And I pray that I may not forget it,
In this land before the grave,
That I may not cry in the future
And no one come to save.

And so I have learned a lesson
Which I ought to have known before,
And which, though I learned it dreaming,
I hope to forget no more.
So I sit alone with my conscience
In the place where the years increase,
And I try to remember the future
In the land where time will cease.

And I know of the future Judgment,
How dreadful soe'er it be,
That to sit alone with my conscience
Will be judgment enough for me.





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