Two lines warning that Tommy's tears and Mary's fears will make them old before their years. More a moral aside than a story, short enough to slip between longer rhymes.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
Tommy's tears and Mary's fears
Will make them old before their years.
About this rhyme
Text confirms 'Tommy's tears and Mary's fears will make them old before their years'.
Two lines, and a plain warning inside them: too many tears and too much fretting will age a child before their time. It's less a story than a piece of advice, over as quickly as it's said.
Say it softly. It works better as comfort than as scolding.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition