A little rule, a little sway,

A sunbeam in a winter's day,

Is all the proud and mighty have

Between the cradle and the grave.

John Dyer (1700-1758): Grongar Hill. Line 88.

This child is not mine as the first was;

I cannot sing it to rest;

I cannot lift it up fatherly,

And bless it upon my breast.

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,

And sits in my little one's chair,

And the light of the heaven she's gone to

Transfigures its golden hair.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): The Changeling.

Me let the tender office long engage

To rock the cradle of reposing age;

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,

Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,

And keep awhile one parent from the sky.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to the Satires. Line 408.

Rock'd in the cradle of the deep,

I lay me down in peace to sleep.

Emma Willard (1787-1870): The Cradle of the Deep.

The heaven's breath

Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,

Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird

Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,

The air is delicate.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 6.