The poem
Sleep! sleep! beauty bright, Dreaming o'er the joys of night; Sleep! sleep! in thy sleep Little sorrows sit and weep.
Sweet Babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace, Secret joys and secret smiles, Little pretty infant wiles.
As thy softest limbs I feel, Smiles as of the morning steal O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast Where thy little heart does rest.
O! the cunning wiles that creep In thy little heart asleep. When thy little heart does wake Then the dreadful lightnings break,
From thy cheek and from thy eye, O'er the youthful harvests nigh. Infant wiles and infant smiles Heaven and Earth of peace beguiles.
This poem is in the Notebook collection, and is listed as "A Cradle Song". Five stanza poem that has someone revealing the attributes of being an innocent babe. The skin is soft, the smile begiles Heaven and Earth, the limbs are as smooth and subtle as the rising first light of the morning. This is a gentle poem that can transport the reader back to the times spent with the first newborn. I know I couldn't get…
Read the whole commentThis poem is in the Notebook collection, and is listed as "A Cradle Song". Five stanza poem that has someone revealing the attributes of being an innocent babe. The skin is soft, the smile begiles Heaven and Earth, the limbs are as smooth and subtle as the rising first light of the morning.
This is a gentle poem that can transport the reader back to the times spent with the first newborn. I know I couldn't get enough of looking at my first child when he slept. He was a miracle in the flesh to me.
This poem seems to have been reincarnated in the Songs of Innocence as "A Cradle Song", but with more "drama" added. The smile is now "his own" and more wishes seem to be added on. The mother weeps over the child, and there is an illustration of a mother weeping at the infant's bedside.
I like the draft from the notebook. I also think that the two versions of the Cradle Song work well with Blake's "the Nurse's Song", "Infant Joy" (both from Songs of Innocence) and Yeats "To A Child Dancing In The Wind". In the latter, the child is older, but is still innocent.