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The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti

A variorum edition: Edited, with textual notes and introductions, by R. W. Crump

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From the Antique.

It's a weary life, it is; she said:—
Doubly blank in a woman's lot:
I wish and I wish I were a man;
Or, better than any being, were not:
Were nothing at all in all the world,
Not a body and not a soul;
Not so much as a grain of dust
Or drop of water from pole to pole.
Still the world would wag on the same,
Still the seasons go and come;
Blossoms bloom as in days of old,
Cherries ripen and wild bees hum.
None would miss me in all the world,
How much less would care or weep:
I should be nothing; while all the rest
Would wake and weary and fall asleep.