The World-Child by Ella Wheeler Wilcox — Read

At times I am the mother of the world; / And mine seem all its sorrows, and its fears. / That rose, which in each mother-heart is curled, / The rose of pity, opens with my tears, / And, waking in the night, I lie and hark / To the lone sobbing, and the wild alarms, / Of my World-child, a wailing in the dark: / The child I fain would shelter in my arms. / I call to it (as from another room / A mother calls, what time she cannot go): / ‘Sleep well, dear world; Love hides behind this gloom. / There is no need for wakefulness or woe, / The long, long night is almost past and gone, / The day is near. ' And yet the world weeps on.

Again I follow it, throughout the day. / With anxious eyes I see it trip and fall, / And hurt itself in many a foolish way: / Childlike, unheeding warning word or call. / I see it grasp, and grasping, break the toys / It cried to own, then toss them on the floor / And, breathless, hurry after fancied joys / That cease to please, when added to its store. / I see the lacerations on its hands, / Made by forbidden tools; but when it weeps, / I also weep, as one who understands; / And having been a child, the memory keeps. / Ah, my poor world, however wrong thy part, / Still is there pity in my mother-heart.