'Come in the glory of thine excellence; Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light; And let the shimmer of thy chariot wheels Burn through the cracks of night.--So slowly, Lord, To lift myself to thee with hands of toil, Climbing the slippery cliff of unheard prayer! Lift up a hand among my idle days-- One beckoning finger. I will cast aside The clogs of earthly circumstance, and run Up the broad highways where the countless worlds Sit ripening in the summer of thy love.' Breathless for fear of losing a word, Robert yet remembered that he had seen something like these words in the papers Ericson had given him to read on the night when his illness began. When he had fallen asleep and silent, he searched and found the poem from which I give the following extracts. He had not looked at the papers since that night. A PRAYER. O Lord, my God, how long Shall my poor heart pant for a boundless joy? How long, O mighty Spirit, shall I hear The murmur of Truth's crystal waters slide From the deep caverns of their endless being, But my lips taste not, and the grosser air Choke each pure inspiration of thy will? I would be a wind, Whose smallest atom is a viewless wing, All busy with the pulsing life that throbs To do thy bidding; yea, or the meanest thing That has relation to a changeless truth Could I but be instinct with thee--each thought The lightning of a pure intelligence, And every act as the loud thunder-clap Of currents warring for a vacuum. Lord, clothe me with thy truth as with a robe. Purge me with sorrow. I will bend my head, And let the nations of thy waves pass over, Bathing me in thy consecrated strength. And let the many-voiced and silver winds Pass through my frame with their clear influence. O save me--I am blind; lo! thwarting shapes Wall up the void before, and thrusting out Lean arms of unshaped expectation, beckon Down to the night of all unholy thoughts. I have seen Unholy shapes lop off my shining thoughts, Which I had thought nursed in thine emerald light; And they have lent me leathern wings of fear, Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust; And Godhead with its crown of many stars, Its pinnacles of flaming holiness, And voice of leaves in the green summer-time, Has seemed the shadowed image of a self. Then my soul blackened; and I rose to find And grasp my doom, and cleave the arching deeps Of desolation.