How does a 25-year old woman come to write a song in
the first-person, imagining what an elderly person might be experiencing? That’s
the curiosity of what Caroline Smith wrote in 1852, probably as she sat one day
in her Andover, Massachusetts home, and said musically “Tarry with Me”. Some of the credit for what Caroline penned
may be attributed to a minister she’d heard speak about that time, too. Apparently,
she wanted to provide words for senior citizens, perhaps even some she knew,
that would resonate with how they felt when approaching the end of life. Undoubtedly,
it’s a consequence of advancing age, when those people lose with increasing frequency
members of their own generation. Oh, there are still others around who they may
know, but what’s it feel like to see life’s light growing dimmer?
Loneliness. That’s the overriding sense of what
Caroline Louisa Sprague Smith gathered from a sermon she’d heard. Not difficult
to imagine, since most people have probably been there at least once. But, few
people besides the elderly live with this creeping phenomenon in quite the way
they do. So, the words of a sermon that Caroline heard in Boston, not far from
her Andover home, must have had some special quality to motivate this young
woman’s poetry. 'The
Adaptedness of Religion to the Wants of the Aged' was how a minister named
Dexter
entitled his thoughts that consequently inspired Caroline. She made two
attempts to urge her poem’s publication: once, soon after the sermon she’d
heard, in 1852-53; then, over 30 years later, when she was about 57 years old,
and just two years shy of her own mortality’s conclusion. Was she suffering in
1884 with the loneliness of which she’d written as a 25-year old? She subtitled
her poem with the words ‘An Old Man’s Prayer’, so we can assume it was a man to
whom she intended to give voice with her words, though we know not his identity;
perhaps it was a male relative or acquaintance. Asking God to keep one company
as life fades is analogous to watching a day’s light vanish bit by bit in
Caroline’s thoughts. ‘Darkness’, ‘shadows’, and the ‘evening’ are linked with
the ‘grave’ in “Tarry with Me”, but Caroline doesn’t wallow hopelessly or
become maudlin with this thought. ‘Rest’, ‘sleep’, and even ‘cheer’ are present
when the Lord tarries. I can endure this, if He is here.
Caroline Smith had a message, not just with the
words she composed, but the position from which she wrote them. If I’m young, I
can act like life is carefree, or I can empathize with those who are emotionally
slogging through something. Whatever they’re feeling just might afflict me
someday. That’s Caroline reaching out with her heart in 1852. And then, just as
she suspected, the words she’d written connected with reality for herself three
decades later. She must have remembered, too, how the ‘Old Man’s Prayer’ found
solace. The Divine One’s the tonic, my companion-remedy, for this malady called
the blues.
See these two sites for accounts of the song story
used as basis for this blog post:
http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/t/a/r/tarrywme.htm
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