The Unfinished Prayer

“now I lay,”—repeat it, darling. “Lay me,” lisped the tiny lips Of my daughter, kneeling, bending O’er her folded finger-tips. “Down to sleep”—“To sleep,” she murmured, And the curly head bent low; “I pray the Lord,” I gently added; “You can say it all, I know.” “Pray the Lord”—the sound came faintly, Fainter still—“My soul to keep;” Then the tired head fairly nodded, And the child was fast asleep. But the dewy eyes half opened When I clasped her to my breast, And the dear voice softly whispered, “Mamma, God knows all the rest.” Oh, the trusting, sweet confiding Of the child heart! Would that I Thus might trust my Heavenly Father, He who hears my feeblest cry.

Collection: 
Sub Title: 
Poems of Home: I. About Children

More from Poet

Sweet maiden of Passamaquoddy, Shall we seek for communion of souls Where the deep Mississippi meanders, Or the distant Saskatchewan rolls? Ah no,—for in Maine I will find thee A sweetly sequestrated nook Where the far winding Skoodoowabskooksis Conjoiins with the Skoodoowabskook. There...

Upon a rock yet uncreate, Amid a chaos inchoate, An uncreated being sate; Beneath him, rock, Above him, cloud. And the cloud was rock, And the rock was cloud. The rock then growing soft and warm, The cloud began to take a form, A form chaotic, vast, and vague, Which issued in the cosmic egg....

From Punch Being a Mathematical Madrigal in the Simplest Form CHARMER, on a given straight line, And which we will call B C, Meeting at a common point A, Draw the lines A C, A B. But, my sweetest, so arrange it That they ’re equal, all the three; Then you ’ll find that, in the sequel, All their...

I Only knew she came and went Lowell. Like troutlets in a pool; Hood. She was a phantom of delight, Wordsworth. And I was like a fool. Eastman. One kiss, dear maid, I said, and sighed, Coleridge. Out of those lips unshorn: Longfellow. She shook her ringlets round her head, Stoddard...

An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders cannonading come, Dealing destruction’s devastating doom. Every endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for fortune fighting,—furious fray! Generals ’gainst generals grapple—gracious God! How honors Heaven...