Now sleep anew,
My mantle is thy sheltering.
Sleep, sleep, thou who dost heaven impart
My Lord thou art;
Sleep, as I press thee to my heart.
Poor the place where thou dost lie,
Earth's loveliest!
Yet take thy rest;
Sleep my Child, and lullaby.
It would be interesting to know if Mrs Browning ever heard any one of the many variants of this lullaby before writing her poem "The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus." The version given above was communicated to me by a resident at Vallauria, in the heart of the Ligurian Alps. In that district it is sung in the churches on Christmas Eve, when out abroad the mountains sleep soundly in their snows and a stray wolf is not an impossible apparition, nothing reminding you that you are within a day's journey of the citron groves of Mentone.