Rock Me to Sleep
school, “fixes the date called for by the writers in February, 1857,” at which time, according to the pamphleteer himself, Mr. Ball was on his way to California in an ocean steamer!
It appears, then, that these letters do not establish a great deal. We do not think that their writers intend deceit, but we know the rapture with which people listen to poets who read their own verses aloud, and we suspect that these listeners to Mr. Ball were carried too far away by their feelings ever to get back to their facts. We think them one and all in error, and we do not believe that any living soul heard Mr. Ball read the disputed poem before 1860, for two reasons: Mrs. Akers did not write it before that time, and Mr. Ball could never have written it after any number of trials.
Let us take one of Mr. Ball’s “Christmas Carols,”—probably the poem which his friends now recall as “Rock Me to Sleep, Mother,”—for all proof and comment upon this last fact:
“CHRISTMAS, 1856
And as time rolls us backward, we feel inclined to weep,
As the spirit of our mother comes, to rock our souls to sleep….
It raised my thoughts to heaven, and in converse with them there
I felt a joy unearthly, and lighter sat world’s care;
For it opened up the vista of an echoless dim shore,
Where my mother kindly greets me, as in good days of yore.”
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