Abram Joseph Ryan

Wilt pray for me?
    They tell me I have Fame;
I plead with thee,
    Sometimes just fold my name
In beautiful "Hail Marys"!
    And you give me more
    Than all the world besides.
It praises Poets for the well-sung lay;
But ah! it hath forgotten how to pray.
It brings to brows of Poets crowns of Pride;
Some win such crowns and wear;
Give me, instead, a simple little Prayer.

The winds are singing a death-knell
Out on the main to-night;
The sky droops low -- and many a bark
That sailed from harbors bright,
    Like many an one before,
    Shall enter port no more:
And a wreck shall drift to some unknown shore
Before to-morrow's light.

The clouds are hanging a death-pall
Over the sea to-night;
The stars are veiled -- and the hearts that sailed
Away from harbors bright,
Shall sob their last for their quiet home --
And, sobbing, sink 'neath the whirling foam
Before the morning's light.

The waves are weaving a death-shroud
Out on the main to-night;
Alas! the last prayer whispered there
By lips with terror white!
    Over the ridge of gloom,
    Not a star will loom!
God help the souls that will meet...

Gone! and they return no more,
But they leave a light in the heart;
The murmur of waves that kiss a shore
Will never, I know, depart.

Gone! yet with us still they stay,
And their memories throb through life;
The music that hushes or stirs to-day,
Is toned by their calm or strife.

Gone! and yet they never go!
We kneel at the shrine of time:
'Tis a mystery no man may know,
Nor tell in a poet's rhyme.

From the mystic sidereal spaces,
In the noon of a night 'mid of May,
Came a spirit that murmured to me --
Or was it the dream of a dream?
No! no! from the purest of places,
Where liveth the highest of races,
In an unfallen sphere far away
(And it wore Immortality's gleam)
Came a Being. Hath seen on the sea
The sheen of some silver star shimmer
'Thwart shadows that fall dim and dimmer
O'er a wave half in dream on the deep?
It shone on me thus in my sleep.

Was I sleeping? Is sleep but the closing,
In the night, of our eyes from the light?
Doth the spirit of man e'en then rest?
Or doth it not toil all the more?
When the earth-wearied frame is reposing,
Is the vision then veiled the less bright?
When the earth from our sight hath been taken,