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