A Broken Prayer + 

O Lord, my God, how long + 

Shall my poor heart pant for a boundless joy? + 

How long, O mighty Spirit, shall I hear + 

The murmur of Truth’s crystal waters slide + 

From the deep caverns of their endless being, + 

But my lips taste not, and the grosser air + 

Choke each pure inspiration of thy will? + 

I am a denseness ’twixt me and the light; + 

1 cannot round myself; my purest thought, + 

Ere it is thought, hath caught the taint of earth, + 

And mocked me with hard thoughts beyond my will. + 

I would be a wind + 

Whose smallest atom is a viewless wing, + 

All busy with the pulsing life that throbs + 

To do thy bidding; yea, or the meanest thing + 

That has relation to a changeless truth, + 

Could I but be instinct with thee⁠—each thought + 

The lightning of a pure intelligence, + 

And every act as the loud thunder-clap + 

Of currents warring for a vacuum. + 

Lord, clothe me with thy truth as with a robe; + 

Purge me with sorrow; I will bend my head + 

And let the nations of thy waves pass over, + 

Bathing me in thy consecrated strength; + 

And let thy many-voiced and silver winds + 

Pass through my frame with their clear influence, + 

O save me; I am blind; lo, thwarting shapes + 

Wall up the void before, and thrusting out + 

Lean arms of unshaped expectation, beckon + 

Down to the night of all unholy thoughts. + 

Oh, when at midnight one of thy strong angels + 

Stems back the waves of earthly influence + 

That shape unsteady continents around me, + 

And they draw off with the devouring gush + 

Of exile billows that have found a home, + 

Leaving me islanded on unseen points, + 

Hanging ’twixt thee and chaos⁠—I have seen + 

Unholy shapes lop off my shining thoughts, + 

And they have lent me leathern wings of fear, + 

Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust; + 

And Godhead, with its crown of many stars, + 

Its pinnacles of flaming holiness, + 

And voice of leaves in the green summer-time, + 

Has seemed the shadowed image of a self! + 

Then my soul blackened; and I rose to find + 

And grasp my doom, and cleave the arching deeps + 

Of desolation. + 

O Lord, my soul is a forgotten well + 

Clad round with its own rank luxuriance; + 

A fountain a kind sunbeam searches for, + 

Sinking the lustre of its arrowy finger + 

Through the long grass its own strange virtue + 

Hath blinded up its crystal eye withal: + 

Make me a broad strong river coming down + 

With shouts from its high hills, whose rocky hearts + 

Throb forth the joy of their stability + 

In watery pulses from their inmost deeps; + 

And I shall be a vein upon thy world, + 

Circling perpetual from the parent deep. + 

Most mighty One, + 

Confirm and multiply my thoughts of good; + 

Help me to wall each sacred treasure round + 

With the firm battlements of special action. + 

Alas, my holy happy thoughts of thee + 

Make not perpetual nest within my soul, + 

But like strange birds of dazzling colours stoop + 

The trailing glories of their sunward speed + 

For one glad moment, filling my blasted boughs + 

With the sunshine of their wings. Make me a forest + 

Of gladdest life wherein perpetual spring + 

Lifts up her leafy tresses in the wind. + 

Lo, now I see + 

Thy trembling starlight sit among my pines, + 

And thy young moon slide down my arching boughs + 

With a soft sound of restless eloquence! + 

And I can feel a joy as when thy hosts + 

Of trampling winds, gathering in maddened bands, + 

Roar upward through the blue and flashing day + 

Round my still depths of uncleft solitude. + 

Hear me, O Lord, + 

When the black night draws down upon my soul, + 

And voices of temptation darken down + 

The misty wind, slamming thy starry doors + 

With bitter jests:⁠—“Thou fool!” they seem to say, + 

“Thou hast no seed of goodness in thee; all + 

Thy nature hath been stung right through and through; + 

Thy sin hath blasted thee and made thee old; + 

Thou hadst a will, but thou hast killed it dead, + 

And with the fulsome garniture of life + 

Built out the loathsome corpse; thou art a child + 

Of night and death, even lower than a worm; + 

Gather the skirts up of thy shadowy self, + 

And with what resolution thou hast left + 

Fall on the damned spikes of doom!” + 

Oh, take me like a child, + 

If thou hast made me for thyself, my God, + 

And lead me up thy hills. I shall not fear, + 

So thou wilt make me pure, and beat back sin + 

With the terrors of thine eye: it fears me not + 

As once it might have feared thine own good image, + 

But lays bold siege at my heart’s doors. + 

Oh, I have seen a thing of beauty stand + 

In the young moonlight of its upward thoughts, + 

And the old earth came round it with its gifts + 

Of gladness, whispering leaves, and odorous plants, + 

Until its large and spiritual eye + 

Burned with intensest love: my God, I could + 

Have watched it evermore with Argus-eyes, + 

Lest when the noontide of the summer’s sun + 

Let down the tented sunlight on the plain, + 

His flaming beams should scorch my darling flower; + 

And through the fruitless nights of leaden gloom, + 

Of plashing rains, and knotted winds of cold, + 

Yea, when thy lightnings ran across the sky, + 

And the loud stumbling blasts fell from the hills + 

Upon the mounds of death, I could have watched + 

Guarding such beauty like another life! + 

But, O my God, it changed!⁠— + 

Yet methinks I know not if it was not I! + 

Its beauty turned to ghastly loathsomeness! + 

Then a hand spurned me backwards from the clouds, + 

And with the gather of a mighty whirlwind, + 

Drew in the glittering gifts of life. + 

How long, O Lord, how long? + 

I am a man lost in a rocky place! + 

Lo, all thy echoes smite me with confusion + 

Of varied speech⁠—the cry of vanished Life + 

Rolled upon nations’ sighs⁠—of hearts uplifted + 

Against despair⁠—the stifled sounds of Woe + 

Sitting perpetual by its grey cold well⁠— + 

Or wasted Toil climbing its endless hills + 

With quickening gasps⁠—or the thin winds of Joy + 

That beat about the voices of the crowd! + 

Lord, hast thou sent + 

Thy moons to mock us with perpetual hope? + 

Lighted within our breasts the love of love + 

To make us ripen for despair, my God? + 

Oh, dost thou hold each individual soul + 

Strung clear upon thy flaming rods of purpose? + 

Or does thine inextinguishable will + 

Stand on the steeps of night with lifted hand + 

Filling the yawning wells of monstrous space + 

With mixing thought⁠—drinking up single life + 

As in a cup? and from the rending folds + 

Of glimmering purpose, do all thy navied stars + 

Slide through the gloom with mystic melody, + 

Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul, + 

Hung like a dewdrop in thy grassy ways, + 

Drawn up again into the rack of change + 

Even through the lustre which created it? + 

—O mighty one, thou wilt not smite me through + 

With scorching wrath, because my spirit stands + 

Bewildered in thy circling mysteries! + 

Oh lift the burdened gloom that chokes my soul + 

With dews of darkness; smite the lean winds of death + 

That run with howls around the ruined temples, + 

Blowing the souls of men about like leaves. + 

Lo, the broad life-lands widen overhead, + 

Star-galaxies arise like drifting snow, + 

And happy life goes whitening down the stream + 

Of boundless action, whilst my fettered soul + 

Sits, as a captive in a noisome dungeon + 

Watches the pulses of his withered heart + 

Lave out the sparkling minutes of his life + 

On the idle flags! + 

Come in the glory of thine excellence, + 

Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light, + 

And let the shimmer of thy chariot wheels + 

Burn through the cracks of night! So slowly, Lord, + 

To lift myself to thee with hands of toil, + 

Climbing the slippery cliffs of unheard prayer! + 

Lift up a hand among my idle days⁠— + 

One beckoning finger: I will cast aside + 

The clogs of earthly circumstance and run + 

Up the broad highways where the countless worlds + 

Sit ripening in the summer of thy love. + 

Send a clear meaning sparkling through the years; + 

Burst all the prison-doors, and make men’s hearts + 

Gush up like fountains with thy melody; + 

Brighten the hollow eyes; fill with life’s fruits + 

The hands that grope and scramble down the wastes; + 

And let the ghastly troops of withered ones + 

Come shining o’er the mountains of thy love. + 

Lord, thy strange mysteries come thickening down + 

Upon my head like snowflakes, shutting out + 

The happy upper fields with chilly vapour. + 

Shall I content my soul with a weak sense + 

Of safety? or feed my ravenous hunger with + 

Sore purged hopes, that are not hopes but fears + 

Clad in white raiment? + 

The creeds lie in the hollow of men’s hearts + 

Like festering pools glassing their own corruption; + 

The slimy eyes stare up with dull approval, + 

And answer not when thy bright starry feet + 

Move on the watery floors: oh, shake men’s souls + 

Together like the gathering of all oceans + 

Rent from their hidden chambers, till the waves + 

Lift up their million voices of high joy + 

Along the echoing cliffs! come thus, O Lord, + 

With nightly gifts of stars, and lay a hand + 

Of mighty peace upon the quivering flood. + 

O wilt thou hear me when I cry to thee? + 

I am a child lost in a mighty forest; + 

The air is thick with voices, and strange hands + 

Reach through the dusk, and pluck me by the skirts. + 

There is a voice which sounds like words from home, + 

But, as I stumble on to reach it, seems + 

To leap from rock to rock: oh, if it is + 

Willing obliquity of sense, descend, + 

Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand, + 

And lead me homeward through the shadows. + 

Let me not by my wilful acts of pride + 

Block up the windows of thy truth, and grow + 

A wasted, withered thing, that stumbles on + 

Down to the grave with folded hands of sloth + 

And leaden confidence. + 