Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,
Soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
Freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
Wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.

Hände, lasst von allem Tun,
Stirn, vergiss du alles Denken,
Alle meine Sinne nun
Wollen sich in Schlummer senken.

Und die Seele, unbewacht,
Will in freien Flügen schweben,
Um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
Tief und tausendfach zu Leben.

Hermann Hesse was not old when he wrote this soothing poem about falling asleep. But it was an old Richard Strauss who transfigured the verses into the third of his Four Last Songs, the music infusing them with a sense that death might be embraced like a tired child welcomes the infinite possibility of sleep where the unshackled soul can soar through the canopy of stars.

The poem was composed in 1911, when Hesse’s first child would have been 6 years old. At bedtime kids of this age want you to remain with them until their final conscious moment and in the thin liminal moments between waking and sleeping they say some wild things; but they generally do not want to transition alone into the starry night, as my little girl, also 6, recently attested:

‘When it’s the night and you’re not here and the window is open and bugs come in and the door is closed and the books look like people and the chair looks like a monster with eyes and there’s a storm and I want to come to you but I’m scared.’

Jack Butler Yeats, The Enfolding Night, 1947.