<h2><SPAN name="poem39"></SPAN>UNANSWERED PRAYERS</h2>
<p class="poetry">Like some schoolmaster, kind in being stern,<br/>
Who hears the children crying o’er their slates<br/>
And calling, “Help me, master!” yet helps not,<br/>
Since in his silence and refusal lies<br/>
Their self-development, so God abides<br/>
Unheeding many prayers. He is not deaf<br/>
To any cry sent up from earnest hearts;<br/>
He hears and strengthens when He must deny.<br/>
He sees us weeping over life’s hard sums;<br/>
But should He give the key and dry our tears,<br/>
What would it profit us when school were done<br/>
And not one lesson mastered?</p>
<p class="poetry"> What a
world<br/>
Were this if all our prayers were answered. Not<br/>
In famed Pandora’s box were such vast ills<br/>
As lie in human hearts. Should our desires,<br/>
Voiced one by one in prayer, ascend to God<br/>
And come back as events shaped to our wish,<br/>
What chaos would result!</p>
<p class="poetry"> In my
fierce youth<br/>
I sighed out breath enough to move a fleet,<br/>
Voicing wild prayers to heaven for fancied boons<br/>
Which were denied; and that denial bends<br/>
My knee to prayers of gratitude each day<br/>
Of my maturer years. Yet from those prayers<br/>
I rose alway regirded for the strife<br/>
And conscious of new strength. Pray on, sad heart,<br/>
That which thou pleadest for may not be given,<br/>
But in the lofty altitude where souls<br/>
Who supplicate God’s grace are lifted, there<br/>
Thou shalt find help to bear thy daily lot<br/>
Which is not elsewhere found.</p>
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