A POET'S PRAYER

Give me pause and time for dreaming;

Send me to some quiet place

Where the winding water, gleaming,

Holds a glass before my face.

Here within the grind and clamour

I forget what I have known;

Life and love have lost their glamour,

And my heart is turned to stone.

Shrub and bird and beast are mingled

With a clumsy dream of man;

Lost the ancient art that singled

Hoof and brow of brooding Pan!

Strike the rock, release the river,

Bid it through the desert go;

Let its shallows dance and quiver,

And its flood majestic flow;

Till again the rushing rapture

Of the poet's soul is mine,

With its swift pursuit to capture

Visions that are all divine.