Caroline L. Smith

Smith, Caroline Louisa, née Sprague, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, and married to the Rev. Charles Smith, pastor of the South Congregational Church, Andover. Mrs. Smith is the author of:—
Tarry with me, O my Saviour. An Old Man's Prayer.

Mrs. Smith's account of this hymn is "About the year 1853 [in the summer of 1852], I heard the Rev. Dr. H. M. Dexter preach a sermon on 'The Adaptedness of Religion to the Wants of the Aged.' I went home and embodied the thought in the hymn 'Tarry with me, 0 my Saviour!' I sent it to Mr. Hallock, for The Messenger. He returned it as 'not adapted to the readers of the paper.' Years after I sent it, without any signature, to the little Andover paper .... I send it to you in its original form, in a little paper of which my sister, Mrs. Terry [Rochester, N.Y.], is editoress." (Hatfield's Poets of the Church, N.Y., 1884, p. 564.) Hatfield gives the full text in 1 stanza of 6 lines. In the Plymouth Collection, 1855, No. 1337, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, was compiled from st. i., ii., vi., vii. This was repeated in The Sabbath Hymn Book, 1858, and others. Of this text st. ii. is sometimes omitted.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)