There came to port last Sunday night
The queerest little craft,
Without an inch of rigging on;
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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!

He is so little to be so large!
Why, a train of cars, or a whale-back barge
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He is so little to be so large!
Why, a train of cars, or a whale-back barge
Couldn't carry the freight
Of the monstrous weight
Of all of his qualities, good and great.
And tho' one view is as good as another
Don't take my word for it. Ask his mother!

Look! how he laughs and stretches out his arms,
And opens wide his blue eyes upon thine,
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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.

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?

How lovely he appears! his little cheeks
In their pure incarnation, vying with
The rose leaves strewn read more

How lovely he appears! his little cheeks
In their pure incarnation, vying with
The rose leaves strewn beneath them.
And his lips, too,
How beautifully parted! No; you shall not
Kiss him; at least not now; he will wake soon--
His hour of midday rest is nearly over.

A baby was sleeping,
Its mother was weeping.

A baby was sleeping,
Its mother was weeping.

The morning that my baby came
They found a baby swallow dead,
And saw a something hard read more

The morning that my baby came
They found a baby swallow dead,
And saw a something hard to name
Fly mothlike over baby's bed.

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!

"The hand that rocks the cradle"--but there is no such hand.
It is bad to rock the baby, they read more

"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.