Read "Worn Out" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I saw a young heart in the grasp of pain; / With bruised breast, and broken, bleeding wing / Shipwrecked on hopeless love's tempestuous main, / Lay the poor tortured thing.
It pulsed with all the anguish of despair; / It ached with all a fond heart's awful power; / Yet I, who stood unhurt above it there, / Envied its lot that hour.
I, who have wasted all the sacred, deep / Emotions of my soul in spendthrift fashion, / Until no sorrow now can make me weep -- / No joy stir me with passion.
I, who have scattered here and there the gold / Of my heart's store, until I spent the whole; / Yet unto each so little gave to hold, / That I enriched no soul.
I, who have sold the birthright of sweet tears, / And no more feel a thrill in pulse or brain, / Would gladly have exchanged my tasteless years / For one salt hour of pain.
Weep on, ye mourners. Glory in the cross / Of some great grief. Thank God you do not know / The greater grief that comes but with the loss / Of power to suffer woe.