Unanswered Prayers

Like some school master, kind in being stern,     Who hears the children crying o'er their slates     And calling, "Help me master!" yet helps not,     Since in his silence and refusal lies     Their self-development, so God abides     Unheeding many prayers. He is not deaf     To any cry sent up from earnest hearts,     He hears and strengthens when He must deny.     He sees us weeping over life's hard sums     But should He give the key and dry our tears     What would it profit us when school were done     And not one lesson mastered?             What a world     Were this if all our prayers were answered. Not     In famed Pandora's box were such vast ills     As lie in human hearts. Should our desires     Voiced one by one in prayer ascend to God     And come back as events shaped to our wish     What chaos would result!             In my fierce youth     I sighed out breath enough to move a fleet     Voicing wild prayers to heaven for fancied boons     Which were denied; and that denial bends     My knee to prayers of gratitude each day     Of my maturer years. Yet from those prayers     I rose alway regirded for the strife     And conscious of new strength. Pray on, sad heart,     That which thou pleadest for may not be given     But in the lofty altitude where souls     Who supplicate God's grace are lifted there     Thou shalt find help to bear thy daily lot     Which is not elsewhere found.