A Prayer
Mine eyes are open but they cannot see for gloom of night;I can no more than lift my heart to thee for inward light.
The wild and fiery passion of my youth consumes my soul;In agony I turn to thee for truth and self-control.
For Passion and all the pleasures it can give will die the death;But this of me eternally must live, thy borrowed breath.
Words in this poem
- eternally adv.
- In an eternal manner.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Prayer is in the public domain. This text is taken from Harlem shadows, Project Gutenberg ebook #64989; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Claude McKay, A Prayer, in Harlem Shadows (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #64989, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mckay-harlem-shadows/a-prayer.html, id L01384.
Form and metre
A Prayer is 6 lines in 3 stanzas of 2 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is fourteeners, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 79% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.8 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in fourteeners.
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 AA nightA · lightA
- 2 AA soulA · controlA
- 3 AA deathA · breathA
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 fourteeners. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Mine eyes are open but they cannot see for gloom of night; | 14 | ···/˘··/˘····· |
| I can no more than lift my heart to thee for inward light. | 14 | ···········/˘· |
| The wild and fiery passion of my youth consumes my soul; | 14 | ···/˘/˘···˘/·· |
| In agony I turn to thee for truth and self-control. | 13 | ·/˘········˘/ |
| For Passion and all the pleasures it can give will die the death; | 15 | ·/˘···/˘······· |
| But this of me eternally must live, thy borrowed breath. | 13 | ····˘/˘···/·· |
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.