Prayer for a Lonely Night (verse)
Engels, Vincent
Now, down the singing boulevards of dream, Of memory, and of memory's phantasies, (O singing boulevards, O soaring thoroughfares From far ways winning toward the altar of this night.) Moves what...
...Thou, in that hour when I Must summon all my voice and speak—for them...
...And here I stand and they shall speak to me In parables...
...O generous of life, O princely beggars, gallant troubadours Called from the spacious ways of memory Come, through the throbbing night...
...All these they bring Sacrifice and remembrance...
...The night thrills...
...O make me ready, God, to take their gifts— To guide them to the moonlit altar-stone, And vigil keep there, till night's shadowed walls Fall, to reveal the citadel of day...
...To pray amid the apathy of space...
...And give me heart, Thou, in that hour when they Are gone, and I alone must go beside Some rocky, wave-washed cavern's untrod nave...
...Golden cups of song and silvered sorrow, Flashing hopes, and flowering staffs of faith, And gems of precious prayer, luminous With courage, dark with pain...
...O give me heart...
...O knightly wanderers, generous of life, O saints and sinners, givers and beggars, come— Come, up the soaring thoroughfares of dream, Come down the singing boulevards and bear Your strange gifts to the moonlit altar-stone...
...Moves what a throng of unforgotten friends, Moves what a brave if motley company...
...Lay bare your hearts That we may know and own our brotherhood...
...There, face in the wind and ankles in the sea...
Vol. 6 • May 1927 • No. 1
