My prayers must meet a brazen heavenAnd fail and scatter all away.Unclean and seeming unforgivenMy prayers I scarcely call to pray.I cannot buoy my heart above;Above I cannot entrance win.I reckon precedents of love,But feel the long success of sin.
My heaven is brass and iron my earth:Yea, iron is mingled with my clay,So harden'd is it in this dearthWhich praying fails to do away.Nor tears, nor tears this clay uncouthCould mould, if any tears there were.A warfare of my lips in truth,Battling with God, is now my prayer.
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What is this poem about?
Summary
The speaker feels completely cut off from God. His prayers rise up only to strike a sky of brass—hard, unyielding—and scatter uselessly. He calls himself unclean, almost unforgiven, and has so little hope that he can barely bring himself to pray at all.
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bareOf yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parchesSquandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starchesSquadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil thereFootfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature's bonfire burns on.But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
A Brother and SisterO I admire and sorrow! The heart’s eye grievesDiscovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,And beauty’s dearest veriest vein is tears.Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blestIn one fair fall; but, for time’s aftercast,Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beamsTheir young delightful hour do feature downThat fleeted else like day-dissolvиd dreamsOr ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.She leans on him with such contentment fondAs well the sister sits, would well the wife;
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrushThrough the echoing timber does so rinse and wringThe ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brushThe descending blue; that blue is all in a rushWith richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.What is all this juice and all this joy?A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginningIn Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
"Heavenly Father" -- take to theeThe supreme iniquityFashioned by thy candid HandIn a moment contraband --Though to trust us -- seems to usMore respectful -- "We are Dust" --We apologize to theeFor thine own Duplicity --