A Prayer
If many years should dim my inward sight,Till, stirred with no emotion,I might stand gazing at the fall of nightAcross the gloaming ocean;
Till storm, and sun, and night, vast with her stars,Would seem an oft-told story,And the old sorrow of heroic warsBe faded of its glory;
Till, hearing, while June’s roses blew their musk,The noise of field and city,The human struggle, sinking tired at dusk,I felt no thrill of pity;
Till dawn should come without her old desire,And day brood o’er her stages,—O let me die, too frail for nature’s hire,And rest a million ages.