“Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber;
Holy Angels guard thy bed;”
is remembered the better for Blake’s Cradle Song. In the old conventional but rhythmic fashion, he too could sing of lambs and children.
There is no answer to strictures on the more common errors of the nursery; they are so obvious that admiration halts before the power of rhythm that could give them life. Here and there comes a thought fresh turned:
“How proud we are, how fond to shew
Our Clothes, and call them rich and new!
When the poor Sheep and Silkworm wore
That very Clothing long before.”
The old indiscriminate approval that gave Dr. Watts a place of honour on the nursery shelf, started the echoes along two centuries. Critics could neither silence the triumphant march of the verse nor dispute a ring of sincerity that it has.
Few poets of the old-fashioned Child’s Garden failed in loyalty to its first planter; but editors made Lilliputian anthologies and filled “Poetical Flower Baskets” from other sources. Early in the new century, the author of The Butterfly’s Ball fell by his frivolous choice from the company of the elect: