<h2><SPAN name="page59"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>THE WORLD-CHILD</h2>
<p class="poetry">At times I am the mother of the world;<br/>
And mine seem all its sorrows, and its fears.<br/>
That rose, which in each mother-heart is curled,<br/>
The rose of pity, opens with my tears,<br/>
And, waking in the night, I lie and hark<br/>
To the lone sobbing, and the wild alarms,<br/>
Of my World-child, a wailing in the dark:<br/>
The child I fain would shelter in my arms.<br/>
I call to it (as from another room<br/>
A mother calls, what time she cannot go):<br/>
‘Sleep well, dear world; Love hides behind this gloom.<br/>
There is no need for wakefulness or woe,<br/>
The long, long night is almost past and gone,<br/>
The day is near.’ And yet the world weeps on.</p>
<p class="poetry">Again I follow it, throughout the day.<br/>
With anxious eyes I see it trip and fall,<br/>
<SPAN name="page60"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>And hurt
itself in many a foolish way:<br/>
Childlike, unheeding warning word or call.<br/>
I see it grasp, and grasping, break the toys<br/>
It cried to own, then toss them on the floor<br/>
And, breathless, hurry after fancied joys<br/>
That cease to please, when added to its store.<br/>
I see the lacerations on its hands,<br/>
Made by forbidden tools; but when it weeps,<br/>
I also weep, as one who understands;<br/>
And having been a child, the memory keeps.<br/>
Ah, my poor world, however wrong thy part,<br/>
Still is there pity in my mother-heart.</p>
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