While I work or while I play;
Make me feel and do what’s right
’Till I lay me down at night.
III.
Be with me, Lord, all through this day,
Both in my work and in my play,
That I by word and deed may be
Worthy of love, of Heaven, and Thee.
John Quincy Adams, “the old man eloquent,” said at the close of fifty years of crowded public life, beginning in 1798 and ending with his death in 1848, that he had never retired at night without repeating the little prayer that his mother taught him, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” He further said it had been his practice to spend an hour each day in reading the Holy Scriptures.