The late date on this song, evidently written down because Ives was then beginning to work on the project that would eventually result in the publication of his set of 114 Songs, belies its gentleness and relatively conventional harmonies and tonality. It is a strophic song in three verses, firmly in the key of E major. Ives credits the text to "A.L. Ives" and gives its date as 1846. It would seem to have been written, therefore, by his Aunt Amelia (Sarah Amelia Ives), when she was nine years old. By the time Charles Ives was born in 1874, she was married to Lyman Brewster, and since she went by "Amelia," Ives might well have misremembered her middle initial as "L." The poetry, at any rate, is sweet, and well within the range of an intelligent nine-year-old girl. Perhaps the composition of the poem was a charming gesture towards Amelia's one-year-old baby brother, George, Charles Ives' father.

The description of the harmonies as "conventional" does not preclude the appearance of some unusual modulations and a couple of intriguingly extended chords. The poem itself is nicely structured so that the most peaceful image occurs at the same spot in each verse. This allows Ives to bring musical motion to a halt at that point in a hushed, high rolled chord.

The less conventional part of the song is its rhythm, which is in alternating bars of 2/4 and 6/8. Ives notes that the 6/8 measures are not triplet subdivisions of the 2/4, but that a quarter note of the former still equals a quarter note of the latter. This means that the pulse of the song seems to expand and contract until at the end the meter reaches stability on 6/8.

© All Music Guide