UNANSWERED PRAYERS

Like some schoolmaster, kind in being stern,

Who hears the children crying o'er their slates

And calling, “Help me, master!” yet helps not,

Since in his silence and 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 over 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 answered. Not

In famed Pandora's box were such vast ills

As lie in human hearts. 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 alway 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 altitude where souls

Who supplicate God's grace are lifted, there

Thou shalt find help to bear thy daily lot

Which is not elsewhere found.