Note.—In Tennyson’s long poem The Princess is a little lullaby so wonderfully sweet that all who have read it wish to read it again. It is one that we all love, no matter whether we are little children and hear it sung to us or are older children and look back to the evenings when we listened to mother’s loving voice as she 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:

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.