A Prayer for Life

       O Father, let me not die young! 
       Earth’s beauty asks a heart and tongue 
To give true love and praises to her worth;
       Her sins and judgment-sufferings call 
For fearless martyrs to redeem thy Earth 
              From her disastrous fall.
    For though her summer hills and vales might seem
   The fair creation of a poet’s dream, —
       Ay, of the Highest Poet,
   Whose wordless rhythms are chanted by the gyres
         Of constellate star-choirs,
   That with deep melody flow and overflow' it, — 
       The sweet Earth, — very sweet, despite 
   The rank grave-smell forever drifting in 
       Among the odors from her censers white 
Of wave-swung lilies and of wind-swung roses, —
   The Earth sad-sweet is deeply attaint with sin
              The pure air, which encloses 
                 Her and her starry kin.
Still shudders with the unspent palpitating 
   Of a great Curse, that to its utmost shore 
              Thrills with a deadly shiver 
              Which has not ceased to quiver 
Down all the ages, nathless the strong beating 
   Of Angel-wings, and the defiant roar 
Of Earth’s Titanic thunders.

                                                        Fan and sad,
       In sin and beauty, our belovèd Earth 
   Has need of all her sons to make her glad 
       Has need of martyrs to refire the hearth 
   Of her quenched altars, — of heroic men 
   With Freedom’s sword, or Truth’s supernal pen, 
To shape the worn-out mould of nobleness again. 
   And she has need of Poets who can string 
       Their harps with steel to catch the lightning’s fire,
       And pour her thunders from the clanging wire,     
       To cheer the hero, mingling with his cheer, 
       Amuse the laggard in the battle’s rear, 
Daunt the stem wicked, and from discord wring 
       Prevailing harmony, while the humblest soul 
Who keeps the tune the warder angels sing 
                     In golden choirs above,
    And only wears, for crown and aureole,
       The glow-worn light of lowliest human love, 
   Shall fill with low, sweet undertones the chasms
   Of silence, ’twixt the booming thunder-spasms. 
And Earth has need of Prophets fiery-lipped 
   And deep-souled, to announce the glorious dooms
Writ on the silent heavens in starry script.
   And flashing fitfully from her shuddering tombs, —
Commissioned Angels of the new-born Faith,
   To teach the immortality of Good,
The soul’s God-likeness, Sin’s coeval death,
   And man’s indissoluble Brotherhood.

Yet never an age, when God has need of him 
   Shall want its Man, predestined by that need, 
   To pour his life in fiery word or deed, —
The strong Archangel of the Elohim!
       Earth’s hollow want is prophet of his coming: 
   In the low murmur of her famished cry.
   And heavy sobs breathed up despairingly,
       Ye hear the near invisible humming 
   Of his wide wings that fan the lurid sky 
Into cool ripples of new life and hope.
While far in its dissolving ether ope
Deeps beyond deeps, of sapphire calm, to cheer
With Sabbath gleams the troubled Now and Here.

              Father! thy will be done!
              Holy and righteous One! 
          Though the reluctant years 
   May never crown my throbbing brows with white,
Nor round my shoulders turn the golden light 
Of my thick locks to wisdom’s royal ermine;
          Yet by the solitary tears,
       Deeper than joy or sorrow, — by the thrill, 
Higher than hope or terror, whose quick germin,
   In those hot tears to sudden vigor sprung, 
Sheds, even now, the fruits of graver age, —
       By the long wrestle in which inward all 
Fell like a trampled viper to the ground, —
       By all that hits me o’er my outward peers, 
              To that supernal stage
Where soul dissolves the bonds by Nature bound, —
   Fall when I may, by pale disease unstrung,
Or by the hand of fratricidal rage,

              I cannot now die young!