This poem is about learning bravery in the safety of your own home. The author points out that long passage a child would have to go to go to bed (particularly in the days before electricity).

1. GOOD NIGHT

When the bright lamp is carried in,
The sunless hours again begin;
O'er all without, in field and lane,
The haunted night returns again.


Now we behold the embers flee
About the firelit hearth; and see
Our faces painted as we pass,
Like Pictures, on the window glass.


Must we to bed indeed? Well then,
Let us arise and go like men,
And face with an undaunted tread
The long black passage to bed.


Farewell, O brother, sister, sire!
O pleasant party round the fire!
The songs you sing, the tales you tell,
Till far tomorrow, fare ye well!


2. SHADOW MARCH

All round the hourse is the jet-black night;
It stares through the windowpane;
It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,
And it moves with the moving flame.


Now my little heart goes a-beating like a drum,
with the breath of the bogy in my hair;
And all round the candle the crooked shadows come,
And go marching up the stair.


The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,
The shadow of the chlid that goes to bed-
All the wicked shadows coming, tramp, tramp, tramp,
with the black night overhead.


3. IN PORT

Last, to the chamber where I lie
My fearful footsteps patter nigh,
And come from out the cold and gloom
Into my warm and cheerful room


There, safe arrived, we turn about
To Keep the coming shadows out,
And close the happy door at last
On all the perils that we past.


Then, when Mama goes by to bed,
She shall come in with tiptoe tread,
And see me lying warm and fast
And in the Land of Nod at last

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