"A Prayer"

A Prayer

God of the lonely soul, 

God of the comfortless, 

God of the broken heart─for these, 

Thy tenderness! 

For prayers there be enough, 

Yea, prayers there be to spare, 

For those of proud and high estate; 

Each hath his share. 

But the beggar at my door, 

The thief behind the bars; 

And those that be too blind to see 

The shining stars; 

The outcast in his hut, 

The useless and the old; 

Whoever walks the city’s streets 

Homeless and cold; 

The sad and lone of soul 

Whom no man understands; 

And those of secret sin, with stains 

Upon their hands; 

And stains upon their souls; 

Who shudder in their sleep, 

And walk their ways with trembling hearts, 

Afraid to weep; 

 

For the childless mother, Lord, 

And ah, the little child 

Weeping the mother in her grave, 

Unreconciled─ 

God of the lonely soul, 

God of the comfortless, 

For these, and such as these, I ask 

Thy tenderness! 

Whose sin be greatest, Lord; 

If each deserve his lot; 

If each but reap as he has sown─ 

I ask Thee not. 

I only ask of Thee 

The marvel of a space 

When these forgot and blind may look 

Upon Thy face. 

"A Prayer" as it appears in Ella Higginson's The Vanishing Race (1911).