Cradle Song

By Karen Bishop Mikkelsen

Eliza R. Snow Poetry Contest First Place Winner

Lullaby, my child, and let me love

Your sleeping purity, so innocent

Of all the conflict I have felt this day.

Sleep now, and let me smile to recollect

The tides that left a treasure on my shore.

The flows of guilt and subsequent resolve

Come later in the quiet time alone

With God: my anger at my anger with

My charge, my child. Are you the grain of sand,

My irritant, that I must make a pearl?

Lullaby. Then let your lustre glow—

Divinity I seldom see by day

(My pride, your willfulness obscure the sheen)—

While I remember what I love in you.

And if I grudge to bear the oyster’s part,

I but forget the artist without art

Is nothing; and my Lord, if I do well,

Will love the gem and magnify the shell.