Rock Me to Sleep, Mother

Backward, turn backward, O Time in your flight,

Make me a child again just for to-night!

Mother, come back from the echoless shore,

Take me again to your heart as of yore;

Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,

Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;

Over my slumbers your loving watch keep—

Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!

I am so weary of toil and of tears;

Toil without recompense, tears all in vain—

Take them, and give me my childhood again!

I have grown weary of dust and decay—

Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;

Weary of sowing for others to reap—

Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep!

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,

Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!

Many a summer the grass has grown green,

Blossomed and faded, our faces between;

Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,

Long I to-night for your presence again;

Come from the silence so long and so deep,

Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep!

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,

No love like mother-love ever has shone;

No other worship abides and endures,

Faithful, unselfish, and patient, like yours!

None like a mother can charm away pain

From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.

Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep—

Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep!

Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,

Fall on your shoulders again as of old;

Let it drop over my forehead tonight,

Shading my faint eyes away from the light;

For with its sunny-edged shadows once more

Haply will throng the sweet vision of yore;

Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep—

Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep!

Mother, dear mother, the years have been long

Since I last listened your lullaby song;

Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem

Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.

Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,

With your light lashes just sweeping my face,

Never hereafter to wake or to weep;

Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep![1]

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[1] Elizabeth Akers Allen was born Elizabeth Chase in Strong, Maine, in 1832. She began to write at the age of fifteen under the pen name Florence Percy. In 1855 she published under that name a volume of poems entitled Forest Buds. In 1858 she became a contributor to Atlantic Monthly. Elizabeth married Paul Akers, the sculptor; he died in 1861. In 1865 she remarried, to E. M. Allen of New York. 

The following year another collection of her poems was published in Boston. This volume included the above poem Rock me to Sleep, Mother, which has been set to music as a popular song by several composers (the clipping Clare pasted in did not include the title). A dispute as to the authorship of the words attracted wide attention. Mrs. Allen wrote them in Portland, Maine, early in 1859, and sent them from Rome in May 1860, to Philadelphia’s Saturday Evening Post. The validity of her claim was presumable, not only from the fact that she had placed the piece in her volume before the discussion arose, but also because she was the only claimant who had written poems of equal or superior quality to the disputed one. That she was the real author was demonstrated by William O’Connor in a painstaking 1867 article in The New York Times. 

Mrs. Allen was for several years literary editor of the Portland, Maine Advertiser, and was a frequent contributor to periodical literature. She died in 1911.  (Source: famousamericans.com)