My prayers must meet a brazen heaven
And fail and scatter all away.
Unclean and seeming unforgiven
My prayers I scarcely call to pray.
I cannot buoy my heart above;
Above I cannot entrance win.
I reckon precedents of love,
But feel the long success of sin.
My heaven is brass and iron my earth:
Yea, iron is mingled with my clay,
So harden’d is it in this dearth
Which praying fails to do away.
Nor tears, nor tears this clay uncouth
Could mould, if any tears there were.
A warfare of my lips in truth,
Battling with God, is now my prayer.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, God Poems, War & Peace Poems, Heaven Poems, Truth Poems, Prayers Poems, Sin PoemsBased on Keywords: brazen, uncouth, success, buoy, battling, unforgiven, harden, precedents