 | Poems |  |
30
PRAYER.
They chide us for our praying—half in scorn
And half in sadness—pointing to their light
Of newly-risen knowledge, whose clear dawn
Scatters the ghostly phantoms of our night,
Which we have made our Gods, and knelt before:
And their cold mockery wrongs our praying less
Than we wrong prayer, who pray for earthly store
Of health, and wealth, and mortal happiness.
Prayer is no child of fleeting hopes and fears,
But of the inmost heart's Eternity,
That with dim passionate striving all its years
Yearns after God and cries for light to see.
And there's one prayer no scorn can ever move—
The endless prayer of a long life of Love.
And half in sadness—pointing to their light
Of newly-risen knowledge, whose clear dawn
Scatters the ghostly phantoms of our night,
Which we have made our Gods, and knelt before:
And their cold mockery wrongs our praying less
Than we wrong prayer, who pray for earthly store
Of health, and wealth, and mortal happiness.
Prayer is no child of fleeting hopes and fears,
But of the inmost heart's Eternity,
That with dim passionate striving all its years
Yearns after God and cries for light to see.
And there's one prayer no scorn can ever move—
The endless prayer of a long life of Love.
We kneel to God on God's own holy day
Together—gathered by the sweet church-bell,
And on bent knees with mingled voices say
Words that grow old with us and lose their spell,
We pray to God at morn and eventide,
Outpouring hearts of hidden joy or care,
And dumbly murmur at the still bedside
Words that we weave together, kneeling there.
But there are seasons when the heart is stirred
Too deeply for expression—and in vain
It pants to shape its prayer, and grasp a word
Meet for its hungering love and holy pain.
Yet not more mightily than this prevails
The prayer we pray low at the altar rails.
Together—gathered by the sweet church-bell,
And on bent knees with mingled voices say
Words that grow old with us and lose their spell,
31
Outpouring hearts of hidden joy or care,
And dumbly murmur at the still bedside
Words that we weave together, kneeling there.
But there are seasons when the heart is stirred
Too deeply for expression—and in vain
It pants to shape its prayer, and grasp a word
Meet for its hungering love and holy pain.
Yet not more mightily than this prevails
The prayer we pray low at the altar rails.
For those heart-stirrings where the heart is dumb,
Those psalms of praise that reach no human ear,
Those voiceless supplications do not come
Out of the void, therein to disappear.
They have their language could we only read—
What though our lips express them not, they win
Clear utterance in every loving deed
As life writes out the spirit's depths within.
Ah! if prayer be man's striving after God
What light but Love may guide him to his goal—
What surer heavenward pathway may be trod?
Love—the self-answered yearning of the soul,
The prayer that is itself the prayed-for grace,
The cry for light that is itself God's face.
Those psalms of praise that reach no human ear,
Those voiceless supplications do not come
Out of the void, therein to disappear.
They have their language could we only read—
What though our lips express them not, they win
Clear utterance in every loving deed
As life writes out the spirit's depths within.
Ah! if prayer be man's striving after God
What light but Love may guide him to his goal—
What surer heavenward pathway may be trod?
Love—the self-answered yearning of the soul,
The prayer that is itself the prayed-for grace,
The cry for light that is itself God's face.
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