Classic Poem

Prayer strengthens us; but oft we faint
And find no courage even to pray;
Oh, that in Heaven some pitying saint
For me might Ave-Mary say!

For sometimes present pleasures drown
The serious vein, and some dark days
Of great, o'ermastering anguish frown
Amid the sacred tapers' blaze.

Before the morning-watch I rose—
I say before this morn's—to kneel,
But of my voice the fountain froze,
Yea, something seemed my soul to seal.

And now I know what rosaries mean:
That oftentimes the heart is weak,
And cannot to the Sire unseen
Its dumb petition duly speak.

Yet every bead may count with Him,
Who healed the palsied and the blind,
Restored the lame and withered limb,
And lifted the disordered mind,

As mine was then, who had no might
Of utterance with mine icy lips,
For one great Shadow veiled the light
Till hope itself was in eclipse.

Eclipses come, and also pass;
Let us not dream like savage men,
With shouts and cries and sounding brass
To scare that Shadow off again;

But take the phases of our thought,
As of the planets—wanderers they,
Even as ourselves, but better taught,
Through gloom or glory, to obey—

As of the moon, that many times
Conceals in clouds her crescent sheen,
But when her fullness cometh, climbs
Above Orion's front, serene.