UNANSWERED PRAYERSLike some schoolmaster, kind in being stern,Who hears the children crying o’er their slatesAnd calling, “Help me, master!” yet helps not,Since in his silence and refusal liesTheir self-development, so God abidesUnheeding many prayers. He is not deafTo 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 doneAnd not one lesson mastered?What a worldWere this if all our prayers were answered. NotIn famed Pandora’s box were such vast illsAs lie in human hearts. Should our desires,Voiced one by one in prayer, ascend to GodAnd come back as events shaped to our wish,What chaos would result!In my fierce youthI sighed out breath enough to move a fleet,Voicing wild prayers to heaven for fancied boonsWhich were denied; and that denial bendsMy knee to prayers of gratitude each dayOf my maturer years. Yet from those prayersI rose alway regirded for the strifeAnd conscious of new strength. Pray on, sad heart,That which thou pleadest for may not be given,But in the lofty altitude where soulsWho supplicate God’s grace are lifted, thereThou shalt find help to bear thy daily lotWhich is not elsewhere found.
Like some schoolmaster, kind in being stern,Who hears the children crying o’er their slatesAnd calling, “Help me, master!” yet helps not,Since in his silence and refusal liesTheir self-development, so God abidesUnheeding many prayers. He is not deafTo 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 doneAnd not one lesson mastered?
What a worldWere this if all our prayers were answered. NotIn famed Pandora’s box were such vast illsAs lie in human hearts. Should our desires,Voiced one by one in prayer, ascend to GodAnd come back as events shaped to our wish,What chaos would result!
In my fierce youthI sighed out breath enough to move a fleet,Voicing wild prayers to heaven for fancied boonsWhich were denied; and that denial bendsMy knee to prayers of gratitude each dayOf my maturer years. Yet from those prayersI rose alway regirded for the strifeAnd conscious of new strength. Pray on, sad heart,That which thou pleadest for may not be given,But in the lofty altitude where soulsWho supplicate God’s grace are lifted, thereThou shalt find help to bear thy daily lotWhich is not elsewhere found.