Classic Poem

Safe sleeping on its mother's breast
The smiling babe appears,
Now sweetly sinking into rest;
Now washed in sudden tears:
Hush, hush, my little baby dear,
There's nobody to hurt you here.

Without a mother's tender care,
The little thing must die,
Its chubby hands too feeble are
One service to supply;
And not a tittle does it know
What kind of world 'tis come into.

The lambs sport gayly on the grass
When scarcely born a day;
The foal, beside its mother ass,
Trots frolicksome away,
No other creature, tame or wild,
Is half so helpless as a child.

To nurse the Dolly, gayly drest,
And stroke its flaxen hair,
Or ring the coral at its waist,
With silver bells so fair,
Is all the little creature can,
That is so soon to be a man.

Full many a summer's sun must glow
And lighten up the skies,
Before its tender limbs can grow
To anything of size;
And all the while the mother's eye
Must every little want supply.

Then surely, when each little limb
Shall grow to healthy size,
And youth and manhood strengthen him
For toil and enterprise,
His mother's kindness is a debt,
He never, never will forget.