Explore "The Old Wooden Cradle" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Good-bye to the cradle, the dear wooden cradle / The rude hand of Progress has thrust it aside. / No more to its motion o'er sleep's fairy ocean, / Our play-weary wayfarers peacefully glide.
No more by the rhythm of slow-moving rocker, / Their sweet dreamy fancies are fostered and fed; / No more to low singing the cradle goes swinging -- / The child of this era is put into bed.
Good-bye to the cradle, the dear wooden cradle, / It lent to the twilight a strange, subtle charm; / When bees left the clover, when play-time was over, / How safe seemed this shelter from danger or harm.
How soft seemed the pillow, how distant the ceiling, / How weird were the voices that whispered around, / What dreams would come flocking, as rocking and rocking, / We floated away into slumber profound.
Good-bye to the cradle, the old wooden cradle, / The babe of to-day does not know it by sight. / When day leaves the border, with system and order, / The child goes to bed and we put out the light.
I bow to Progression and ask no concession, / Though strewn be her pathway with wrecks of the past; / So off with old lumber, that sweet ark of slumber, / The old wooden cradle, is ruthlessly cast.