Cradle-Song Song for Christmas
Child, when on this night you lieSoftly, undisturbedly,On as white a bed of downAs any child’s in London Town,By a fire that all the nightKeeps your chamber warm and light:Dream, if dreams are yet your law,Your bed of down a bed of straw,Only warmed and lighted byOne star in the open sky.Sweet you’ll sleep then, for we knowOnce a Child slept sweetly so.
About this text
Cradle-Song Song for Christmas is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sonnets and Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #56244; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Eleanor Farjeon, Cradle-Song Song for Christmas, in Sonnets and Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56244, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/farjeon-sonnets-poems/cradle-song-song-for-christmas.html, id L21964.
Form and metre
Cradle-Song Song for Christmas is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 83% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A-BBCCDDAAEE lieA · undisturbedly · downB · townB · nightC · lightC · lawD · strawD · byA · skyA · knowE · soE
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Child, when on this night you lie | 7 | ······· |
| Softly, undisturbedly, | 7 | /˘····· |
| On as white a bed of down | 7 | ······· |
| As any child’s in London Town, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| By a fire that all the night | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Keeps your chamber warm and light: | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Dream, if dreams are yet your law, | 7 | ······· |
| Your bed of down a bed of straw, | 8 | ········ |
| Only warmed and lighted by | 8 | /˘·˘·/˘· |
| One star in the open sky. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Sweet you’ll sleep then, for we know | 7 | ······· |
| Once a Child slept sweetly so. | 7 | ····/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.