Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Babyhood
Have you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours?
T. B. Aldrich—Baby Bell.
Oh those little, those little blue shoes!
Those shoes that no little feet use.
Oh, the price were high
That those shoes would buy,
Those little blue unused shoes!
William C. Bennett—Baby’s Shoes.
Lullaby, baby, upon the tree top;
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down comes the baby, and cradle and all.
Said to be “first poem produced on American soil.” Author a Pilgrim youth who came over on the Mayflower. See Book Lover, Feb., 1904.
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.
Old nursery rhyme, attributed in this form to Charles Dupee Blake.
Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
William Blake—A Cradle Song.
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.
Byron—Cain. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 14.
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!
Byron—Cain. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 24.
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.
Byron—Cain. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 171.
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!
G. W. Cable—The New Arrival.
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.
Campbell—Pleasures of Hope. Pt. I. L. 225.
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!
Edmund Vance Cooke—The Intruder.
“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 and Adamses, you know.
Ascribed to Bishop Doane—What Might Have Been. A complaint that for hygienic reasons, he was not allowed to play with his grandchild in the old-fashioned way.
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.
Margaret Eytinge—Baby Louise.
Baloo, baloo, my wee, wee thing.
Richard Gall—Cradle Song.
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.
Ralph Hodgson—The Swallow.
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!
J. G. Holland—Bitter-Sweet. First Movement. L. 6.
When the baby died,
On every side
Rose stranger’s voices, hard and harsh and loud.
The baby was not wrapped in any shroud.
The mother made no sound. Her head was bowed
That men’s eyes might not see
Her misery.
Helen Hunt Jackson—When the Baby Died.
Sweet is the infant’s waking smile,
And sweet the old man’s rest—
But middle age by no fond wile,
No soothing calm is blest.
Keble—Christian Year. St. Philip and St. James. St. 3.
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.
Charles Lamb—The Gypsy’s Malison. Sonnet in Letter to Mrs. Procter, Jan. 29, 1829.
The hair she means to have is gold,
Her eyes are blue, she’s twelve weeks old,
Plump are her fists and pinky.
She fluttered down in lucky hour
From some blue deep in yon sky bower—
I call her “Little Dinky.”
Fred. Locker-Lampson—Little Dinky.
A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel,
Perplex’d with the newly found fardel of life.
Fred. Locker-Lampson—The Old Cradle.
O child! O new-born denizen
Of life’s great city! on thy head
The glory of the morn is shed,
Like a celestial benison!
Here at the portal thou dost stand,
And with thy little hand
Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future’s undiscovered land.
Longfellow—To a Child.
A baby was sleeping,
Its mother was weeping.
Samuel Lover—Angel’s Whisper.
Her beads while she numbered,
The baby still slumbered,
And smiled in her face, as she bended her knee;
Oh! bless’d be that warning,
My child, thy sleep adorning,
For I know that the angels are whispering with thee.
Samuel Lover—Angel’s Whisper.
He seemed a cherub who had lost his way
And wandered hither, so his stay
With us was short, and ’twas most meet,
That he should be no delver in earth’s clod,
Nor need to pause and cleanse his feet
To stand before his God:
O blest word—Evermore!
Lowell—Threnodia.
How did they all just come to be you?
God thought about me and so I grew.
Geo. Macdonald—Song in “At the Back of The North Wind.” Ch. XXXIII.
Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the Everywhere into here.
Geo. Macdonald—Song in “At the Back of The North Wind.” Ch. XXXIII.
Whenever a little child is born
All night a soft wind rocks the corn;
One more buttercup wakes to the morn,
Somewhere, Somewhere.
One more rosebud shy will unfold,
One more grass blade push through the mold,
One more bird-song the air will hold,
Somewhere, Somewhere.
Agnes Carter Mason—Somewhere.
And thou hast stolen a jewel, Death!
Shall light thy dark up like a Star.
A Beacon kindling from afar
Our light of love and fainting faith.
Gerald Massey—Babe Christabel.
You scarce could think so small a thing
Could leave a loss so large;
Her little light such shadow fling
From dawn to sunset’s marge.
In other springs our life may be
In bannered bloom unfurled,
But never, never match our wee
White Rose of all the world.
Gerald Massey—Our Wee White Rose.
A sweet, new blossom of Humanity,
Fresh fallen from God’s own home to flower on earth.
Gerald Massey—Wooed and Won.
Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toun,
Up stairs and doon stairs in his nicht-goun,
Tirlin’ at the window, cryin’ at the lock,
“Are the weans in their bed? for it’s now ten o’clock.”
William Miller—Willie Winkie.
As living jewels dropped unstained from heaven.
Pollock—Course of Time. Bk. V. L. 158.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.
Psalms. VIII. 2.
A grievous burthen was thy birth to me;
Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy.
Richard III. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 167.
God mark thee to his grace!
Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nursed:
An I might live to see thee married once,
I have my wish.
Romeo and Juliet. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 59.
Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love
That, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse
And presently all humbled kiss the rod!
Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 57.
A daughter and a goodly babe,
Lusty and like to live: the queen receives
Much comfort in ’t.
Winter’s Tale. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 27.
Sweetest li’l’ feller, everybody knows;
Dunno what to call him, but he’s mighty lak’ a rose;
Lookin’ at his mammy wid eyes so shiny blue
Mek’ you think that Heav’n is comin’ clost ter you.
Frank L. Stanton—Mighty Lak’ a Rose.
A little soul scarce fledged for earth
Takes wing with heaven again for goal,
Even while we hailed as fresh from birth
A little soul.
Swinburne—A Baby’s Death.
But what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Pt. LIV. St. 5.
Beat upon mine, little heart! beat, beat!
Beat upon mine! you are mine, my sweet!
All mine from your pretty blue eyes to your feet,
My sweet!
Tennyson—Romney’s Remorse.
Baby smiled, mother wailed,
Earthward while the sweetling sailed;
Mother smiled, baby wailed,
When to earth came Viola.
Francis Thompson—The Making of Viola. St. 9.
A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure.
Tupper—Of Education.
Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed!
Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling on thy head.
Watts—A Cradle Hymn.