This short, pretty song has many of the earmarks of a composition class assignment from Ives' Yale professor, Horatio Parker. However, it cannot be dated as far back as 1898, when Ives graduated from Yale, so whether it originated as one of Parker's frequent assignment to set a German-language poem is conjectural.

It is originally a poem from the famous German collection of folk poetry, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which inspired numerous Romantic-era composers, mostly notably Mahler (who set an hour's worth of songs from it) and Brahms, whose own famous Wiegenlied or Lullaby comes from the Wunderhorn collection.

The song is mostly in 3/4, with a nice rocking figure in the piano. The only break in this rhythm is a single measure of 4/4, occurring in such a way that it does not bother the vocal part. The rather unusual key is that of C sharp major, or seven sharps, and it only discreetly modulates from there.

Ives' lullaby might have been written for its commercial potential, but since he more or less gave up on the idea of making any money as a composer after he failed to get a spot on the Yale faculty in 1902, it did not appear until Ives picked it to represent his early professional phase in his collection of 114 Songs. He chose the English version for inclusion in that book.

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