O God, forgive, I pray:The heart thou holdest in thy hand
Loves more this sunny day!
I see the hundred thousand wait
Around the radiant throne:
Ah, what a dreary, gilded state!
What crowds of beings lone!
I do not care for singing psalms;
I tire of good men's talk;
To me there is no joy in palms,
Or white-robed, solemn walk.
I love to hear the wild winds meet,
The wild old winds at night;
To watch the cold stars flash and beat,
The feathery snow alight.
I love all tales of valiant men,
Of women good and fair:
If I were rich and strong, ah, then
I would do something rare!
But for thy temple in the sky,
Its pillars strong and white—
I cannot love it, though I try,
And long with all my might.
Sometimes a joy lays hold on me,
And I am speechless then;
Almost a martyr I could be,
To join the holy men.
Straightway my heart is like a clod,
My spirit wrapt in doubt:—
A pillar in the house of God, And never more go out!
No more the sunny, breezy morn;
All gone the glowing noon;
No more the silent heath forlorn,
The wan-faced waning moon!
My God, this heart will never burn,
Must never taste thy joy!
Even Jesus' face is calm and stern:
I am a hapless boy!
* * * * *
II.
I read good books. My heart despairs.
In vain I try to dress
My soul in feelings like to theirs—
These men of holiness.
My thoughts, like doves, abroad I fling
Into a country fair:
Wind-baffled, back, with tired wing,
They to my ark repair.
Or comes a sympathetic thrill
With long-departed saint,
A feeble dawn, without my will,
Of feelings old and quaint,
As of a church's holy night,
With low-browed chapels round,
Where common sunshine dares not light
On the too sacred ground,—
One glance at sunny fields of grain,
One shout of child at play—
A merry melody drives amain
The one-toned chant away!
My spirit will not enter here
To haunt the holy gloom;
I gaze into a mirror mere,
A mirror, not a room.
And as a bird against the pane
Will strike, deceived sore,
I think to enter, but remain
Outside the closed door.
Oh, it will call for many a sigh
If it be what it claims—
This book, so unlike earth and sky,
Unlike man's hopes and aims!—
To me a desert parched and bare—
In which a spirit broods
Whose wisdom I would gladly share
At cost of many goods!
* * * * *
III.
O hear me, God! O give me joy
Such as thy chosen feel;
Have pity on a wretched boy;
My heart is hard as steel.
I have no care for what is good;
Thyself I do not love;
I relish not this Bible-food;
My heaven is not above.
Thou wilt not hear: I come no more;
Thou heedest not my woe.
With sighs and tears my heart is sore.
Thou comest not: I go.
* * * * *
IV.
Once more I kneel. The earth is dark,
And darker yet the air;
If light there be, 'tis but a spark
Amid a world's despair—
One hopeless hope there yet may be
A God somewhere to hear;
The God to whom I bend my knee—
A God with open ear.
I know that men laugh still to scorn
