My prayers must meet a brazen heaven <br />And fail and scatter all away. <br />Unclean and seeming unforgiven <br />My prayers I scarcely call to pray. <br />I cannot buoy my heart above; <br />Above I cannot entrance win. <br />I reckon precedents of love, <br />But feel the long success of sin. <br /> <br />My heaven is brass and iron my earth: <br />Yea, iron is mingled with my clay, <br />So harden'd is it in this dearth <br />Which praying fails to do away. <br />Nor tears, nor tears this clay uncouth <br />Could mould, if any tears there were. <br />A warfare of my lips in truth, <br />Battling with God, is now my prayer.<br /><br />Gerard Manley Hopkins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-prayers-must-meet-a-brazen-heaven/
