A Prayer

By John Charles McNeill

If many years should dim my inward sight,

Till, stirred with no emotion,

I might stand gazing at the fall of night

Across the gloaming ocean;

Till storm, and sun, and night, vast with her stars,

Would seem an oft-told story,

And the old sorrow of heroic wars

Be faded of its glory;

Till, hearing, while June's roses blew their musk,

The noise of field and city,

The human struggle, sinking tired at dusk,

I felt no thrill of pity;

Till dawn should come without her old desire,

And day brood o'er her stages,—

O let me die, too frail for nature's hire,

And rest a million ages.