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 then 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 a 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.
The playful expression ‘that’s the way the world wags’, rarely used now, sounds bleak from this woman’s mouth. The  alliterative  ‘world would wag’ could be humorous but not in this context. The world is indifferent to the suffering of women, wherever and whoever they are.
From The Antique