The Prayer-Seeker

ALONG the aisle where prayer was made
A woman, all in black arrayed,
Close-veiled, between the kneeling host,
With gliding motion of a ghost,
Passed to the desk and laid thereon
A scroll which bore these words alone,—
Pray for me!

Back from the place of worshipping
She glided like a guilty thing:
The rustle of her draperies, stirred
By hurrying feet, alone was heard ;
While, full of awe, the preacher read,
As out into the dark she sped :
“Pray for me!”

Back to the night from whence she came,
To unimagined grief or shame !
Across the threshold of that door
None knew the burden that she bore;
Alone she left the written scroll,
The legend of a troubled soul, —
Pray for me!

Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin !
Thou leav’st a common need within;
Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight,
Some misery inarticulate,
Some secret sin, some shrouded dread,
Some household sorrow all unsaid.
Pray for us !

Pass on! The type of all thou art,
Sad witness to the common heart !
With face in veil and seal on lip,
In mute and strange companionship,
Like thee we wander to and fro,
Dumbly imploring as we go:
Pray for us !

Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads
Our want perchance hath greater needs ?
Yet they who make their loss the gain
Of others shall not ask in vain,
And Heaven bends low to hear the prayer
Of love from lips of self-despair:
Pray for us!

In vain remorse and fear and hate
Beat with bruised hands against a fate,
Whose walls of iron only move,
And open to the touch of love.
He only feels his burdens fall
Who, taught by suffering, pities all.
Pray for us !

He prayeth best who leaves unguessed
The mystery of another’s breast.
Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o’erflow,
Or heads are white, thou need’st not know.
Enough to note by many a sign
That every heart hath needs like thine.
Pray for us!