e
led us gently into the land of dreams while she watched patiently
for father's return.

Here are the stanzas which are usually known by the name _Sweet and
Low_:

Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe 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, while my pretty one sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west
Under the silver moon:
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

It is interesting to try to determine just how a great poet makes
us feel so strongly the thing that he tells us. In this case
Tennyson thinks of a mother in England and a father who is
somewhere in the West, out on the broad Atlantic, but is coming
home to his little one. The mother dreams only of the home-coming
of her husband, and she wishes the baby to learn to love its father
as much as she does, so as she sings the little one to sleep, she
pours out her love for both in beautiful melody.

To express this mother-love and anxious care the poet has chosen
simple words that have rich, musical sounds, that can be spoken
easily and smoothly and that linger on the tongue. He speaks of the
sea, the gentle wind, the rolling waters, the dying moon and the
silver sails, all of which call up ideas that rest us and make us
happy, and then with rare skill he arranges the words so that when
we read the lines we can feel the gentle rocking movement that
lulls the little one, the pretty one into its gentle slumbers.

CHILDHOOD[124-1]

_By_ DONALD G. MITCHELL

Isabel and I--she is my cousin, and is seven years old, and I am
ten--are sitting together on the bank of a stream, under an oak tree
that leans half way over to the water. I am much stronger than she, and
taller by a head. I hold in my hands a little alder rod, with which I am
fishing for the roach and minnows, that play in the pool below us.

She is watching the cork tossing on the water, or playing with the
captured fish that lie upon the bank. She has auburn ringlets that fall
down upon her shoulders;