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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep

By Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870)

[Born in New Berlin, Conn., 1787. Died at Troy, N. Y., 1870. A collection of her Poems, afterward suppressed by the Author, was printed in 1830.]

ROCKED in the cradle of the deep

I lay me down in peace to sleep;

Secure I rest upon the wave,

For thou, O Lord! hast power to save.

I know thou wilt not slight my call,

For Thou dost mark the sparrow’s fall;

And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,

Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

When in the dead of night I lie

And gaze upon the trackless sky,

The star-bespangled heavenly scroll,

The boundless waters as they roll,—

I feel thy wondrous power to save

From perils of the stormy wave:

Rocked in the cradle of the deep,

I calmy rest and soundly sleep.

And such the trust that still were mine,

Though stormy winds swept o’er the brine,

Or though the tempest’s fiery breath

Roused me from sleep to wreck and death.

In ocean cave, still safe with Thee

The germ of immortality!

And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,

Rocked in the cradle of the deep.