University of Virginia Library

This is the rune of the women who bear in sorrow:
Who, having anguish of body, die in the pangs of bearing,
Who, with the ebb at the heart, pass ere the wane of the babe-mouth.

The Rune

O we are tired, we are tired, all we who are women:
Heavy the breasts with milk that never shall nourish:
Heavy the womb that never again shall be weighty.
For we have the burthen upon us, we have the burthen,
The long slow pain, the sorrow of going, and the parting.
O little hands, O little lips, farewell and farewell.
Bitter the sorrow of bearing only to end with the parting.

The Dream

Far away in the east of the world a Woman had sorrow.
Heavy she was with child, and the pains were upon her.
And God looked forth out of heaven, and he spake in his pity:
“O Mary, thou bearest the Prince of Peace, and thy seed shall be blessëd.”
But Mary the Mother sighed, and God the All-Seeing wondered,
For this is the rune he heard in the heart of Mary the Virgin:—
“Man blindfold soweth the seed, and blindly he reapeth:
And to the word of the Lord is a blessing upon the sower.
O what of the blessing upon the field that is sown,
What of the sown, not of the sower, what of the mother, the bearer?
Sure it is this that I see: that everywhere over the world
The man has the pain and the sorrow, the weary womb and the travail!
Everywhere patient he is, restraining the tears of his patience
Slow in upbraiding, swift in passion unselfish,
Bearing his pain in silence, in silence the shame and the anguish:
Slow, slow he is to put the blame on the love of the woman:
Slow to say she led him astray, swift ever to love and excuse her!
O 'tis a good thing, and I am glad at the seeing,
That man who has all the pain and the patient sorrow and waiting
Keepeth his heart ever young and never upbraideth the woman
For that she laughs in the sun and taketh the joy of her living
And holdeth him to her breast, and knoweth pleasure
And plighteth troth akin to the starry immortals,
And soon forgetteth, and lusteth after another,
And plighteth again, and again, and yet again and again,
And asketh one thing only of man who is patient and loving,—
This: that he swerve not ever, that faithful he be and loyal,
And know that the sorrow of sorrows is only a law of his being,
And all is well with Woman, and the World of Woman, and God.
O 'tis a good thing, and I am glad at the seeing!
And this is the rune of man the bearer of pain and sorrow,
The father who giveth the babe his youth his joy and the life of his living!”

(And high in His Heaven God the All-Seeing troubled.)

The Rune

O we are weary, how weary, all we of the burthen:
Heavy the breasts with milk that never shall nourish:
Heavy the womb that never again shall be fruitful:
Heavy the hearts that never again shall be weighty.
For we have the burthen upon us, we have the burthen,
The long slow pain, and the sorrow of going, and the parting.
O little hands, O little lips, farewell and farewell:
Bitter the sorrow of bearing only to end with the parting,
Bitter the sorrow of bearing only to end with the parting.