Grand Haven Daily Tribune  January 14, 1892

“Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep”
—
BY DAVID FLETCHER HUNTON
—
Often when I lay my head
Down upon my lonely bed,
I can see the stars of night
Twinkling with their borrowed light,
And some spirit in the air
Tells me of that little prayer,
Which was early learned to me
When I knelt at mother’s knee:
And I breath in silence deep,
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”

Soon the moon comes up a pace,
Smiling sweetly in my face;
And my room is filled with light,
O’er me something’s hovering,
Very like an angel’s wing!
And I think when gazing there
Of that sweet unfinished prayer!
And thus I break the silence deep,
“I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

Then I think I hear a call,
Coming from the farther wall;
And I see in moonlight fair,
Mother’s picture hanging there!
She, who taught my lips to pray,
At the close of every day;
And whose tender loving face,
Smiles upon me from that place!
Hence I breathe for her dear sake
“If I should die before I wake.”

Darker grows the little room—
Thicker gathers midnight gloom;
“Till, around night’s ebon throne,
Stigian darkness reigns alone!
Then, the night winds from their lair,
Moan around my cottage there;
And my heart is so afraid,
That before I sleep, I prayed—
“Oh, if I never more may wake”
“I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

Grand Haven, Mich., Dec. 25^th, 1901