Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight; <br />Make me a child again, just for tonight! <br />Mother, come back from that echoless shore; <br />Take me again in your heart as of yore -- <br />Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care, <br />Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair, <br />Over my slumbers your loving watch keep -- <br />Rock me to sleep, mother -- rock me to sleep! <br /> <br />Backward, turn backward, O tide of the years! <br />I am so weary of toil and of tears -- <br />Toil without recompense, tears all in vain -- <br /> <br />Take them and give me my childhood again! <br />I have grown weary of dust and decay -- <br />Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away -- <br />Weary of sowing for others to reap -- <br />Rock me to sleep, mother -- rock me to sleep! <br /> <br />Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue, <br />Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you! <br />Many a summer the grass has grown green, <br />Blossomed and faded -- our faces between -- <br />Yet with strong yearning and passionate pain, <br />Long I tonight for your presence again; <br />Come from the silence, mother -- rock me to sleep! <br /> <br />Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold, <br />Fall on your shoulders again as of old -- <br />Let it drop over my forehead tonight, <br />Shading my faint eyes away from the light! <br />For, with its sunny-edged shadows once more, <br />Haply will throng all the visions of yore; <br />Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep -- <br />Rock me to sleep, mother -- rock me to sleep! <br /> <br />Mother, dear mother! the years have been long <br />Since I last listened to your lullaby song; <br />Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem <br />Womanhood's years have been only a dream; <br />With your light lashes just sweeping my face, <br />Never hereafter to wake or to weep -- <br />Rock me sleep, mother -- rock me to sleep!<br /><br />Elizabeth Akers Allen<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rock-me-to-sleep/
