Sleep, my child, and hushaby.

Or this from Roumania:

Sleep, my daughter, sleep an hour;
Mother's darling gilliflower.
Mother rocks thee, standing near,
She will wash thee in the clear
Waters that from fountains run,
To protect thee from the sun.

Sleep, my darling, sleep an hour,
Grow thou as the gilliflower.
As a tear-drop be thou white,
As a willow tall and slight;
Gentle as the ring-doves are,
And be lovely as a star!

We hardly know what poems are sung to English babies, but we hope they
are as beautiful as these two. Blake might have written them.

The Countess Martinengo has certainly given us a most fascinating book.
In a volume of moderate dimensions, not too long to be tiresome nor too
brief to be disappointing, she has collected together the best examples
of modern Folk-songs, and with her as a guide the lazy reader lounging in
his armchair may wander from the melancholy pine-forests of the North to
Sicily's orange-groves and the pomegranate gardens of Armenia, and listen
to the singing of those to whom poetry is a passion, not a profession,
and whose art, coming from inspiration and not from schools, if it has
the limitations, at least has also the loveliness of its origin, and is
one with blowing grasses and the flowers of the field.

Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs. By the Countess Evelyn Martinengo
Cesaresco. (Redway.)

THE CENCI

(Dramatic Review, May 15, 1886.)

The production of The Cenci last week at the Grand Theatre, Islington,
may be said to have been an era in the literary history of this century,
and the Shelley Society deserves the highest praise and warmest thanks of
all for having given us an opportunity of seeing Shelley's play under the
conditions he himself desired for it. For The Cenci was written
absolutely with a view to theatric presentation, and had Shelley's own
wishes been carried out it would have been produced during his lifetime
at Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O'Neill in the principal
parts. In working out his conception, Shelley had studied very carefully
the aesthetics of dramatic art. He saw that the essence of the drama is
disinterested presentation, and that the characters must not be merely
mouthpieces for splendid poetry but must be living subjects for terror
and for pity. 'I have endeavoured,' he says, 'as nearly as possible to
represent the characters as they probably were, and have sough