Augustin S. Macdonald, comp. A Collection of Verse by California Poets. 1914.
By Juliet Wilbor TompkinsSisters of the Little Sorrows
F
All patient and sore dismayed,
Come ye of the Little Sorrows,
To whom no tears are paid:
The hurt, who may not stagger,
Who dare not nurse their stings—
For wounds are of sword and dagger,
And thorns are little things!
The youth of your heart grown numb?
Ah, sisters, we sit bewailing
Your daily martyrdom:
And she who treads the city
With feet that mourn the wild,
She shares our aching pity;
And she who bears no child;
And she who must earn her bread
By paths where the spirit falters;
And she whose friend is dead;
And she who’d fain recover
The spendthrift days that were;
And the heart that found no lover—
Kind Lord, they laugh at her!
Shall never be understood,
But pity may ease your labors,
O patient Sisterhood!
For there be hearts no sadder,
Nor truer right to mourn,
Though the wasp is not the adder,
One dies not of the thorn.