The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier/The Prayer-Seeker
THE PRAYER-SEEKER
Along the aisle where prayer was made,
A woman, all in black arrayed,
Close-veiled, between the kneeling host,
With gliding motion of a ghost,
Passed to the desk, and laid thereon
A scroll which bore these words alone,
Pray for me!
Back from the place of worshipping
She glided like a guilty thing:
The rustle of her draperies, stirred
By hurrying feet, alone was heard;
While, full of awe, the preacher read,
As out into the dark she sped:
Pray for me!
Back to the night from whence she came,
To unimagined grief or shame!
Across the threshold of that door
None knew the burden that she bore;
Alone she left the written scroll,
The legend of a troubled soul,—
Pray for me!
Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin!
Thou leav’st a common need within;
Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight,
Some misery inarticulate,
Some secret sin, some shrouded dread,
Some household sorrow all unsaid.
Pray for us!
Pass on! The type of all thou art,
Sad witness to the common heart!
With face in veil and seal on lip,
In mute and strange companionship,
Like thee we wander to and fro,
Dumbly imploring as we go:
Pray for us!
Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads
Our want perchance hath greater needs?
Yet they who make their loss the gain
Of others shall not ask in vain,
And Heaven bends low to hear the prayer
Of love from lips of self-despair:
Pray for us!
In vain remorse and fear and hate
Beat with bruised hands against a fate
Whose walls of iron only move
And open to the touch of love.
He only feels his burdens fall
Who, taught by suffering, pities all.
Pray for us!
He prayeth best who leaves unguessed
The mystery of another’s breast.
Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o’erflow,
Or heads are white, thou need’st not know.
Enough to note by many a sign
That every heart hath needs like thine.
Pray for us!