Page:Field Poems of Childhood.djvu/74



HE fire upon the hearth is low,

And there is stillness everywhere,

And, like wing'd spirits, here and there

The firelight shadows fluttering go.

And as the shadows round me creep,

A childish treble breaks the gloom,

And softly from a further room

Comes: "Now I lay me down to sleep."

And, somehow, with that little pray'r

And that sweet treble in my ears,

My thought goes back to distant years,

And lingers with a dear one there;

And as I hear my child's amen,

My mother's faith comes back to me—

Crouched at her side I seem to be,

And mother holds my hands again.