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| FROM visions of gray to-morrows, | |
| All patient and sore dismayed, | |
| Come ye of the Little Sorrows, | |
| To whom no tears are paid: | |
| The hurt, who may not stagger, | 5 |
| Who dare not nurse their stings— | |
| For wounds are of sword and dagger, | |
| And thorns are little things! | |
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| ’Tis only your beauty failing, | |
| The youth of your heart grown numb? | 10 |
| 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; | 15 |
| And she who bears no child; | |
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| And she of the crumbling altars; | |
| And she who must earn her bread | |
| By paths where the spirit falters; | |
| And she whose friend is dead; | 20 |
| And she who’d fain recover | |
| The spendthrift days that were; | |
| And the heart that found no lover— | |
| Kind Lord, they laugh at her! | |
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| The wounds that are not of sabres | 25 |
| Shall never be understood, | |
| But pity may ease your labors, | |
| O patient Sisterhood! | |
| For there be hearts no sadder, | |
| Nor truer right to mourn, | 30 |
| Though the wasp is not the adder, | |
| One dies not of the thorn. | |
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