Prayer of a Saint
By C.V. Vernon,
Osborn Street, Hull, England
God of Creation, thee I own,
And prostrate all before thy throne;
Thine, Father, faithful let me be
In time and through Eternity.
Not only thine when friends shall smile,
Or love’s chaste blandishments beguile,
Not only while life’s sea is calm,
While every wound can feel a balm;
Or Fortune’s choicest flowerets bloom,
Or air is pregnant with perfume,
In Fancy’s amaranthine bowers,
With health, youth, peace, and joyous hours.
Not only when the heart can tell,
In ecstasy, that “all is well.”
But thine when all of these are fled,
And Hope herself seems with the dead,
When storm on storm shall furious rise,
When lurid lightning rends the skies.
When thunder echoes thunder back,
And desolations mark their track,
In nature’s dark, despairing hour –
Great God, support me by thy power.
(1854)
This made me think of Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, “Thou are Indeed Just, Lord:”
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.