God of the lonely soul,
God of the comfortless,
God of the broken heart─for these,
Thy tenderness!
For prayers there be enough,
Yea, prayers there be to spare,
For those of proud and high estate;
Each hath his share.
But the beggar at my door,
The thief behind the bars;
And those that be too blind to see
The shining stars;
The outcast in his hut,
The useless and the old;
Whoever walks the city’s streets
Homeless and cold;
The sad and lone of soul
Whom no man understands;
And those of secret sin, with stains
Upon their hands;
And stains upon their souls;
Who shudder in their sleep,
And walk their ways with trembling hearts,
Afraid to weep;
For the childless mother, Lord,
And ah, the little child
Weeping the mother in her grave,
Unreconciled─
God of the lonely soul,
God of the comfortless,
For these, and such as these, I ask
Thy tenderness!
Whose sin be greatest, Lord;
If each deserve his lot;
If each but reap as he has sown─
I ask Thee not.
I only ask of Thee
The marvel of a space
When these forgot and blind may look
Upon Thy face.
“A Prayer” as it appears in Higginson’s The Vanishing Race (1911).