"The hand that rocks the cradle"--but there is no such hand.
It is bad to rock the baby, they would have us understand;
So the cradle's but a relic of the former foolish days,
When mothers reared their children in unscientific ways;
When they jounced them and they bounced them, those poor dwarfs
of long ago--
The Washingtons and Jeffersons, you know.
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Have you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of read more
Have you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours?
When you fold your hands, Baby Louise!
Your hands like a fairy's, so tiny and fair,
With read more
When you fold your hands, Baby Louise!
Your hands like a fairy's, so tiny and fair,
With a pretty, innocent, saintlike air,
Are you trying to think of some angel-taught prayer
You learned above, Baby Louise.
He smiles, and sleeps!--sleep on
And smile, thou little, young inheritor
Of a world scarce less young: read more
He smiles, and sleeps!--sleep on
And smile, thou little, young inheritor
Of a world scarce less young: sleep on and smile!
Thine are the hours and days when both are cheering
And innocent!
Suck, baby! suck! mother's love grows by giving:
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting!
read more
Suck, baby! suck! mother's love grows by giving:
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting!
Black manhood comes when riotous guilty living
Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting.
Look! how he laughs and stretches out his arms,
And opens wide his blue eyes upon thine,
read more
Look! how he laughs and stretches out his arms,
And opens wide his blue eyes upon thine,
To hail his father; while his little form
Flutters as winged with joy. Talk not of pain!
The childless cherubs well might envy thee
The pleasures of a parent.
What is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things, no doubt;
Unwritten history!
read more
What is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things, no doubt;
Unwritten history!
Unfathomed mystery!
Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,
And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,
As if his head were as full of kinks
And curious riddles as any sphinx!
- Josiah Gilbert Holland (used pseudonym Timothy Titcomb),
Rock-bye-baby on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough bends read more
Rock-bye-baby on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough bends the cradle will fall,
Down comes the baby, cradle and all.
Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps;
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps;
She, while read more
Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps;
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps;
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes.
There came to port last Sunday night
The queerest little craft,
Without an inch of rigging on;
read more
There came to port last Sunday night
The queerest little craft,
Without an inch of rigging on;
I looked and looked--and laughed.
It seemed so curious that she
Should cross the unknown water,
And moor herself within my room--
My daughter! O my daughter!
