Like some school master, kind in being stern,
Who hears the children crying o'er their slates
And calling, "Help me, master!" yet seems to help not,
For in His silence and present refusal lies
Their self-development, so God abides
Unheeding many prayers. He is not deaf
To any cry sent up from earnest hearts;
He hears and strengthens when he must deny.
He sees us weeping o'er life's hard sums,
But should he give the key and dry our tears,
What would it profit us when school were done
And not one lesson mastered?
What a world
Were this if all our prayers were quickly answered.
Should our desires,
Voiced one by one in prayer, ascend to God
And come back as events shaped to our wish,
What Chaos would result!
In my fierce youth
I sighed out breath enough to move a fleet,
Voicing wild prayers to heaven for fancied boons
Which were denied; and that denial bends
My knee to prayers of gratitude each day
Of my maturer years. Yet from those prayers
I rose always regirded for the strife
And conscious of new strength. Pray on, sad heart,
That which thou pleadest for may not be given,
But in the lofty attitude where souls
Who supplicate God's grace are lifted, there
Thou shalt find help to bear thy daily lot
Which is not elsewhere found.
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