O
God, lean downward to my couch this night―
This awful night of nights―and hear
the prayer
That fain would struggle up the
startled air,
To
vex thine ear, from my lips dumb and white
With
pain. Lean down from heaven’s lone delight,
And lay thy listening ear to my
throat―where
The passionate words stop, voiceless
in despair.
God,
Thou can’st hear and understand aright
All
that my tortured heart would ask of Thee.
Put out the fires that leap along my
veins,
And bid this beating of my pulses
cease!
Take,
take these maddening dreams away from me,
And cool my eyes with tears like
gentle rains. . .
Hear Thou my wordless prayer! God,
give me peace!
"Prayer of the Heart" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).
A draft of "A Prayer of the Heart" on onionskin paper, courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.
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