A Prayer
Father in heaven! from whom the simplest flower,On the high Alps or fiery desert thrown,Draws not sweet odour or young life alone,But the deep virtue of an inborn power,To cheer the wanderer in his fainting hourWith thoughts of Thee--to strengthen, to infuseFaith, love, and courage, by the tender huesThat speak thy presence! oh, with such a dowerGrace thou my song!--the precious gift bestowFrom thy pure Spirit’s treasury divine,To wake one tear of purifying flow,To soften one wrung heart for thee and thine;So shall the life breathed through the lowly strainBe as the meek wild-flower’s--if transient, yet not vain.
Words in this poem
- odour n.
- Any smell, whether fragrant or offensive; scent; perfume. [OE. odor, odour, OF. odor, odour, F. odeur, fr. L. odor; akin to olere to smell, Gr. Olfactory, Osmium, Ozone, Redolent.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Prayer is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Felicia Hemans, Project Gutenberg ebook #66785; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Felicia Hemans, A Prayer, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/a-prayer.html, id L19813.
Form and metre
A Prayer is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBAACC-DEDEFF flowerA · thrownB · aloneB · powerA · hourA · infuseC · huesC · dower · bestowD · divineE · flowD · thineE · strainF · vainF
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Father in heaven! from whom the simplest flower, | 11 | /˘·/···/˘/˘ |
| On the high Alps or fiery desert thrown, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Draws not sweet odour or young life alone, | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| But the deep virtue of an inborn power, | 11 | ···/˘··/·/˘ |
| To cheer the wanderer in his fainting hour | 10 | ···/˘··/˘/ |
| With thoughts of Thee--to strengthen, to infuse | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| Faith, love, and courage, by the tender hues | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| That speak thy presence! oh, with such a dower | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Grace thou my song!--the precious gift bestow | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| From thy pure Spirit’s treasury divine, | 10 | ···/˘/˘˘˘/ |
| To wake one tear of purifying flow, | 10 | ·····/˘·˘· |
| To soften one wrung heart for thee and thine; | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| So shall the life breathed through the lowly strain | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Be as the meek wild-flower’s--if transient, yet not vain. | 12 | ·····/·/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.