Lullabies and Baby Songs

Southland Times, Issue 22038, 10 June 1933, Page 18

Lullabies and Baby Songs

(Not Original.) Childhood and youth stand apart in gardens all their own, but to babyhood belong a multitude of lullabies and cradle songs and rhymes in almost every language under the sun. Great musicians have given us cradle songs, lullabies, slumber songs, that need no words to imprint them on our hearts for ever. Songs without words! But let us listen to them with shut eyes, and, in truth, we can see the cradle swinging, swinging backwards and forwards as the mother softly croons her baby from peevish restlessness and discontent into the peace of slumberland. But to my mind the prettiest little lullaby I know is that written by Lord Tennyson.— “Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea; Low, low, breath and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, my pretty one sleeps.” —and we need no music! The Magical metre, the melody in the words, gives us one of the most musical slumber songs in the world. One of the most beautiful of all our cradle songs, either ancient or modern, was given to us, not very long ago, by a young American poet, James Berry Bensel who died poor and alone. Perhaps the door of his memory had not quite shut down upon his own baby days and he could still hear his mother crooning, crooning away down the years. , This is his lullaby—- “ Sleep, baby, sleep! God gave thee smiles to keep, And merry eyes will wait Thy coming to the gate When thou shalt be a man With all the world to scan. Sleep, baby, sleep! God gave thee fields to reap, When harvest time is here, With sunshine and good cheer. But first as thou shalt know, He gave thee much to sow Sleep, baby, sleep!” —Sent in by Cousin Jean Neill (14) Tokanui. “