Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems/Labor and Prayer
LABOR AND PRAYER
Despite the wisdom of the Past,
From lips prophetic or divine,
Men wander in this world aghast,
And ask another saving sign.
They seek cold Science in her cell,
With front of brass and feet of clay;
And this is what her sibyls tell:
“The man who labors need not pray!”
Starving upon this soulless rind,
The pilgrim, weary with his strife,
Cries to the proud poetic mind:
“Sing to us, seer, the psalm of life!”
The bard, with sensual lore endowed,
Unclasps his dreamy Book of Fate,
And answers: “Let the famished crowd
First learn to labor and to wait!”
With spirit-hunger humbler grown,
The seeker lifts his saddened eyes
To Him whose everlasting throne
Fills all the earth and all the skies;
And from that oracle of might,
Healing the torment of the rod,
List to the accents of delight:
“The germ of action glows in God!”
The sum of all is: Seek ye first
The heavenly kingdom Christ restored,
Exclaiming, with supernal thirst,
“The glory Thine alone, O Lord!”
Then shall descend celestial rest,
Unknown to children of despair,
The consecration of the Blest,
In labor, patience, faith and prayer!
Labor, to do the best we may,
In patient kinship with our trust;
Faith, to illume the coming day
That wakes the tragic trance of dust;
Prayer, to deserve the Guiding Hand,
Without whose grasp our steps are vain—
Lord! to thy other Living Land
Link us with that electric chain!