Each night our family sings Compline, the night time prayers of the Church. We learnt the way from the Maternal Heart Church. Since then they have shifted to singing the Divine Office from the Benedictine books, so they have slightly different words and tunes. Here is the Roman one that most 1962 books use. In 1974 there was yet another change.

The hymn for Compline is very beautiful. The prayers to ward off bad dreams are helpful when getting children off to bed. Each new season brings a new tune, the words staying the same. They’re all pretty simple, as you don’t need complicated stuff to learn just before bed!

John Mason Neale’s translation runs thus:

To Thee, before the close of day Creator of the world, we pray that with Thy wonted favor, Thou wouldst be our Guard and Keeper now.

From all ill dreams defend our eyes, from nightly fears and fantasies: tread under foot our ghostly foe, that no pollution we may know.

O Father, that we ask be done through Jesus Christ Thine only Son, who, with the Holy Ghost and Thee, shall live and reign eternally. Amen.

For lyrics in Latin and English go to Te lucis at Thesaurus Precum Latinarum.

The tune I’ve got here today is the regular Sunday and other minor feasts tune you can use most of the time. Here’s a pdf, mostly taken from GregoBase.

Here is how we sing it: telucis.mp3 [audio: http://brandt.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/telucis.mp3]

And here is the serious rendition with the music scrolling past.