UNANSWERED PRAYERS.
LIKE some school master, 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