“A Prayer of the Heart”

O God, lean downward to my couch this night―

            This awful night of nights―and hear
the prayer

            That fain would struggle up the startled air,

To vex thine ear, from my lips dumb and white

With pain. Lean down from heaven’s lone delight,

            And lay thy listening ear to my throat―where

            The passionate words stop, voiceless in despair.

God, Thou can’st hear and understand aright

All that my tortured heart would ask of Thee.

            Put out the fires that leap along my veins,

            And bid this beating of my pulses cease!

Take, take these maddening dreams away from me,

            And cool my eyes with tears like gentle rains. . .

            Hear Thou my wordless prayer! God, give me peace!

 

 

“Prayer of the Heart” as it appears in Higginson’s When the Birds Go North Again (1898).

 

A draft of “A Prayer of the Heart,” courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham Washington.

 

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