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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Ruth Tenney

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Lullaby of the Outcast

Ruth Tenney

From “In China”

CHILD, born of my weeping, sleep.

They have beaten me, and cast me out of the village—

Sleep, my own.

Your father was a merchant who passed through the fields—

His sleeves were of silk and his hair shone in the dusk.

Sleep, my son—may you never know pain.

The blossoming wheat shelters us;

Far off, the village dogs bay to the night—

Sleep, my own.

At dawn we will set out over the plain

Toward the city of merciful strangers.

There I will bow down beside the great gate,

Begging of all who enter in;

Till they, seeing you in my arms,

Little one, little prince clothed in rags,

Must pity us with a great pity and fling us alms.

Sleep on my heart, little son—

May you never know pain.