From the cradle to the grave, Even if I misbehave, There's a place for me On government subsidy.

-Anonymous
Quoted by a caller from Baltimore on Station WAMU, Washington,15  Jun1993.

Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foiled circuitous wandererötill at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Poems:  A New Edition,'Sohrab and Rustrum', l.886^92.

   Von derWiege bis zur Bahre, zuerst dieW a« sche. From the cradle to the grave, underwear first, last and all the time.

-Brecht, Bertolt Eugen Friedrich
  Die Dreigroschenoper ('The Threepenny Opera'), act 2, sc.5 (translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willet,1970).

Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking.

-Griffith, D(avid Lewelyn) W(ark)
  Intolerance.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

-Nabokov,Vladimir
Conclusive Evidence (revised as  Speak, Memory,1966), ch.1.

Winter is for womenö The woman still at her knitting, At the cradle of Spanish walnut, Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.

-Plath, Sylvia
  'Wintering', published posthumously byTed Hughes (Ariel, 1965).

A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  Prometheus Unbound, act 4, l.551^2.

The hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world. 886

-Wallace,William Ross
c.1865  John o' London'sTreasureTrove.

You have disgraced yourselves again.Youarerocking the cradle of a new masterpiece.

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
  Addressing the rioting audience at Dublin's AbbeyTheatre at the premi e' re of J M Synge'sThe Playboy of theWesternWorld.