Across the Sabbath hush,
The Sabbath silence─Hark!
Uprises sweet and golden-clear
The song of the meadow-lark.
Oh, let me breathe a prayer,
Though it be sad and late,
And bear it in thy notes, O lark,
To heaven’s very gate!
‘Tis said one stands and waits
For each plea spoken clear,
To bear it thro’ the golden ways,
That God himself may hear.
Then all the angel-ones
Will bend and murmur─“Hark!”
When my poor prayer floods heaven’s space
In the song of the meadow-lark.
And will God be less kind,
Though it be sad and late,
When all my passion and desire
Mount, singing, thro’ the gate?
“The Song-Prayer” as it appears in Higginson’s The Vanishing Race (1911).