I stood in the semi-darkness
And watched a child at her play;
Her cares were of multiform nature,
And the daylight was speeding away.
Her dolly demanded attention,
To be petted and kissed and be fed;
To have on its little nightgown,
And then to be put in its bed.
All this with a motherly yearning
She had learned by the instinct of love;
And the dolly but faintly presented
A gift from the heaven above.
The dear little creature had finished
And was just about turning to go,
When the scene all changed in a moment
And turned into weeping and woe.
A boy, almost reaching to manhood,
Dashed wildly from the room,
And seizing the doll from the cradle
Rushed out again into the gloom.
There was one wild scream from the maiden,
A clasp of the hands and a chase;
But the boy thought the thing was funny
And was in for a brotherly race.
But soon, when the screaming was louder
And he saw all the pain he had caused.
He threw down the doll on the flooring,
And sneering, he suddenly paused.
"I wouldn't be such a cry-baby," he said,
With a half-mocking drawl;
"I can buy plenty more that's just like it,
"It's only a plaster doll.
"Why don't you get one made of china,
Instead of that plaster thing?
An then I would try to respect it,"
And he took himself off with a fling.
"Oh, my dolly, my dolly is broken,"
And quick in her bosom she hid
The maimed little bit of her sunshine,
"I Loved it, I loved it, I did.
"I don't care if it was only plaster;
'Twas my dolly, my dolly, my own."
And she knelt by the mangled plaything.
"And now I am left all alone."
Ten years from that very evening,
I stood by the couch of a child,
While a man knelt and wept beside it,
With a face both haggard and wild.
'Twas the old scene of the dolly repeated,
The boy had to manhood grown;
A hand crushed his plaster idol
And left him to mourn all alone.
Ah me! how the world is repeated,
The work of each day o'er and o'er.
We all have our broken dollies
Away on the golden shore.
Did he think, I wonder, of that one
He threw on the carpetless floor.