A SICK CHILD'S MEDITATION by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI

Pain and weariness, aching eyes and head,
Pain and weariness all the day and night:
Yet the pillow's soft on my smooth soft bed,
And fresh air blows in, and mother shades the light.

Thou, O Lord, in pain hadst no pillow soft,
In Thy weary pain, in Thine agony:
But a cross of shame held Thee up aloft
Where Thy very mother could do nought for Thee.

I would gaze on Thee, on Thy patient face;
Make me like Thyself, patient, sweet, at peace;
Make my days all love, and my nights all praise,
Till all days and nights and patient sufferings cease.

Love is all happiness, love is all beauty,
Love is the crown of flaxen heads and hoary,
Love is the only everlasting duty,
And love is chronicled in endless story
And kindles endless glory.

A handy Mole who plied no shovel
To excavate his vaulted hovel,
While hard at work met in mid-furrow
An Earthworm boring out his burrow.
Our Mole had dined and must grow thinner
Before he gulped a second dinner,
And on no other terms cared he
To meet a worm of low degree.
The Mole turned on his blindest eye
Passing that base mechanic by;
The Worm entrenched in actual blindness
Ignored or kindness or unkindness;
Each wrought his own exclusive tunnel
To reach his own exclusive funnel.

A plough its flawless track pursuing
Involved them in one common ruin.
Where now the mine and countermine,
The dined-on and the one to dine?
The impartial ploughshare of extinction
Annulled them all without distinction.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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