Sonnets.
‘ Our prayers are prophets.’ Father, be it so !1
My dream became a thought—my thought desire,2
Desire a prayer, whose living wings aspire3
Unceasingly Thine awful will to know.4
Such prayers as with our being’s essence glow,5
(The flush of a deep instinct’s holy fire).6
With earnest pulses rising high and higher,7
Absorbing by intensity earth’s woe ;8
Prayers that, when other invocations fail,9
‘ By the reality of Sorrows,’ cry.10
Or, to enforce the pathos of their wail,11
‘ By thine All-might,’ ‘ by Love,’ ‘ Eternity,—12
O let such pleadings by their truth prevail,13
Such prayers be prophets of our Destiny.14