Explore "An Empty Crib" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Beside a crib that holds a baby's stocking, / A tattered picture book, a broken toy, / A sleeping mother dreams that she is rocking / Her fair-haired cherub boy.
Upon the cradle's side her light touch keeping, / She gently rocks it, crooning low a song; / And smiles to think her little one is sleeping, / So peacefully and long.
Step light, breathe low, break not her rapturous dreaming, / Wake not the sleeper from her trance of joy, / For never more save in sweet slumber-seeming / Will she watch o'er her boy.
God pity her when from her dream Elysian / She wakes to see the empty crib, and weep; / Knowing her joy was but a sleeper's vision, / Tread lightly -- let her sleep.