174 



POETRY A3TD POET3. 



the cradle, and the mode in which 

 the Indians bring up their children. 

 " Soon after our forefathers landed 

 at Plymouth, some of the young 

 people went out into a field where 

 Indian women were picking straw- 

 berries, and observed several cradles 

 hung upon the boughs of trees, with 

 the infants fastened into them a 

 novel and curious sight to any Eu- 

 ropean. A gentle breeze sprang up, 

 which waved the cradle to and fro. A 

 young man, one of the party, peeled 

 off a piece of birch bark, and upon 

 the spot wrote the following lines, 

 which have been repeated thousands 

 of times, by thousands of American 

 mothers, very few of whom ever 

 knew or cared for its origin : 

 ' Lullaby baby, upon the tree top ; 

 When the wind blows the cradle will 



rock ; 

 When the bough breaks the cradle will 



fall ; 

 And down comes lullaby, baby, and 



all.' " 



LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. 

 Lord Byron was afflicted with a 

 club foot, and when young he sub- 

 mitted to some very painful opera- 

 tions to have the deformity re- 

 moved, but with no success. His 

 mother was a proud, passionate, and 

 wicked woman, in whom even the 

 yearnings of natural affection 

 seemed stifled. Let us see the 

 influence his mother exerted on 

 this brilliant and powerful mind. 



The readers of Byroris Life must 

 have shuddered to hear him speak 

 of his mother. Moore, the biogra- 

 pher of Byron, speaks three times 

 of this fact, and the passages are 

 so remarkable that we will tran- 

 scribe them literally. The first is 

 brief, but significant : 



" On the subject of his deformed 

 foot," says Moore, in his Byron 

 (vol. i. p. 21), " Byron described the 

 feeling of horror and humiliation 

 that came over him when his mo 

 ther, in one of her fits of passion 

 called him a 'lame bratf " 



The second passage is scarcely 

 ess significant: 



: But in the case of Lord Byron, 

 disappointment met him at the 

 very threshold of life. His mo- 

 ther, to whom his affections first 

 naturally and with order turned, 

 either repelled them rudely, or ca- 

 priciously trifled with them. In 

 speaking of his early days to a 

 fiend at Genoa, a short time be- 

 fore his departure for Greece, he 

 ;raced his first feelings of pain and 

 aumiliation to the coldness with 

 which his mother had received his 

 caresses in infancy, and the fre- 

 quent taunts on his personal defor- 

 mity with which she wounded him." 



This passage, found on the 146th 

 page, is only excelled in dreadful- 

 ness by the following, on the 198th 

 page : 



"He had spoken of his mother 

 to Lord Sligo, and with a feeling 

 that seemed little short of aversion. 

 ' Some tune or other,' said Byron, 

 ; I will tell you why I thus feel 

 towards her.' A few days after, 

 when they were bathing together 

 in the Gulf of Lepanto, he referred 

 to his promise, and pointing to his 

 naked leg, exclaimed, ' Look there ! 

 it is to her false delicacy at my 

 birth I owe that deformity; and 

 yet, as long as I can remember, she 

 has never ceased to taunt and re- 

 proach me with it. Even a few 

 days before we parted for the last 

 time, on my leaving England, she, 

 in one of her fits of passion, uttered 

 an imprecation on me, praying that 

 I might prove as ill-formed in mind 

 as I am in body!' His look and 

 manner, in relating the frightful 

 circumstance, can only be con- 

 ceived by those who have seen 

 him in a similar state of excite- 

 ment." 



What an imprecation from the 

 lips of a woman, and that woman 

 a mother " Praying that I might 

 prove as ill-formed in mind as I 

 am in body !" 



