Today it seemed As tho' I walked Kneedeep in prayer, As one may tread Thru summer grass, Yet everywhere The silence grew. No winging words Mute lips did part. The hush of noon Lay on the land That is my heart.
The speaker describes a day when she felt surrounded by prayer, wading through it "kneedeep" the way you might walk through tall summer grass. It's a gentle, physical image: prayer as something soft and abundant, brushing against her legs as she moves. But the surprise comes in the next lines. Even with all this prayer around her, silence only deepens. No words take flight, and her lips stay closed.
The poem seems to say that prayer doesn't always arrive as speech. She is immersed in it, yet nothing is said, and the stillness spreads until it fills her whole inner world. The last image, "the hush of noon" lying over the land of her heart, is a still, bright, heavy quiet, like a hot midday when even the birds go quiet. The mood is calm rather than anxious. The silence feels less like emptiness than like a deep, wordless peace, though the poem leaves room for a hint of longing too.