Seal Lullaby, by Rudyard Kipling

Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,

  And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us,
  At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
  Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
  Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas!

This poem is beautiful, memorable, and finely crafted. Eric Whitacre made this lovely poem into a song. It’s absolutely brilliant.

I see this song as a mother seal looking in on her sleeping pup (much the way any parent looks in on their sleeping child), and softly sings this sweet lullaby, while the reader (or listener of Eric Whitacre’s beautiful setting) envisions the trials and adventures of her little baby, through these picturesque and poetic words.

Flipperling is a term of endearment that the mother is using to refer to her baby. Also, I believe that the hollows they’re at rest in are the hollows in between the waves at sea. Billow is another name for a wave, and I’ve always understood that the mother and baby are floating in the water while she sings the lullaby.

Both weary and wee are adjectives describing the baby seal. Weary means that it is tired, and wee means that it is small.

寶貝兒， 夜幕低垂。

潮水黑中透綠，

月光輕撫海浪俯視我們。

讓我們在沙沙潮水裡休息吧。

輕柔的潮浪是你安枕的地方，

疲憊的小寶貝兒，放心地捲曲吧。

願浪潮不會吵醒你，鯊魚也不能傷害你，

在輕搖大海的懷抱中安睡吧！