Prayer is the world in tune, A spirit-voice, and vocal joys, whose echo is Heaven's bliss.

Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy. A prayer sent from the heart's deep core is a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite. Prayer may be inaudible speech, bit it is necessarily a candid dialogue with that higher entity, it is an attempt to represent yourself, in order to go to the roots of action.

I love to give thanks in solitude. For me, it is wordless, and mainly takes the form of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving gives my prayer wings and it goes where it must go. My prayer knows much more about it than I do. I say my prayer without giving the Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that; he knows best what is good for us.

Prayer is not necessarily sitting before an idol, or telling beads, or reciting shlokas... To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than myself. Whenever I concentrate my attention something so that I completely forget my own ego and desires, I am praying.

Prayer

Great God, I ask for no meaner pelf

Than that I may not disappoint myself,

That in my action I may soar as high

As I can now discern with this clear eye.

And next in value, which thy kindness lends,

That I may greatly disappoint my friends,

Howe'er they think or hope that it may be,

They may not dream how thou'st distinguished me.

That my weak hand may equal my firm faith

And my life practice what my tongue saith

That my low conduct may not show

Nor my relenting lines

That I thy purpose did not know

Or overrated thy designs.

Henry David Thoreau

Hope likes justification, but can do without.

Ideas have been Gods for me. My consciousness a harmony of devotion to sanguine expectation. Hope, to me, has been that liar whose veracity I have never doubted even when belied. There have been times that I have despaired and, as the Bard says, "been at enmity with cozening hope". But such times have been few and far between, for I have found truth in what George Eliot says: "What we call our despiar in only the painful eagerness of unfed hope". The trick, I have found, is to confront suffering with hope. Hope triumphs every single time!

Hope has sometimes been fragile, and trembled like a harebell. Other times, it has been as solid as a rock and been my bulwark when all around me failure raged like a sea in storm. I have, however, refused to abandon what my friend HS calls my "pathological" belief in the occurrence of the impossible!

Here are some things which give me hope:

My faith, which is my anchor, my guide and the lantern which lights dark paths.

Children. Because they have two things in abundance: joy and a sense of wonder.

Dewdrops, which stand for all that is fragile and fast-disappearing and yet so essential in life.

Song of Hope

O sweet To-morrow! -

After to-day
There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
Dimmed by no gray -
No gray!

While the winds wing us
Sighs from The Gone,
Nearer to dawn
Minute-beats bring us;
When there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
Further anon -
Anon!

Doff the black token,
Don the red shoon,
Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
To-morrow shines soon -
Shines soon!

~ Thomas Hardy ~

Thousand feet of sparkling water -- the Milky Way pouring down from heaven.

THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL

They left their home of summer ease

Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,

To seek, by ways unknown to all,

The promise of the waterfall.

Some vague, faint rumor to the vale

Had crept--perchance a hunter's tale--

Of its wild mirth of waters lost

On the dark woods through which it tossed.

Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere

Whirled in mad dance its misty hair;

But who had raised its veil, or seen

The rainbow skirts of that Undine?

They sought it where the mountain brook

Its swift way to the valley took;

Along the rugged slope they climb,

Their guide a thread of sound and foam.

Height after height they slowly won;

The fiery javelins of the sun

Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade

With rock and vine their steps delayed.

But, through leaf-openings, now and then

They saw the cheerful homes of men,

And the great mountains with their wall

Of misty purple girdling all.

The leaves through which the glad winds blew

Shared. the wild dance the waters knew;

And where the shadows deepest fell

The wood-thrush rang his silver bell.

Fringing the stream, at every turn

Swung low the waving fronds of fern;

From stony cleft and mossy sod

Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod.

And still the water sang the sweet,

Glad song that stirred its gliding feet,

And found in rock and root the keys

Of its beguiling melodies.

Beyond, above, its signals flew

Of tossing foam the birch-trees through;

Now seen, now lost, but baffling still

The weary seekers' slackening will.

Each called to each: 'Lo here! Lo there!

Its white scarf flutters in the air!'

They climbed anew; the vision fled,

To beckon higher overhead.

So toiled they up the mountain-slope

With faint and ever fainter hope;

With faint and fainter voice the brook

Still bade them listen, pause, and look.

Meanwhile below the day was done;

Above the tall peaks saw the sun

Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set

Behind the hills of violet.

'Here ends our quest!' the seekers cried,

'The brook and rumor both have lied!

The phantom of a waterfall

Has led us at its beck and call.'

But one, with years grown wiser, said

'So, always baffled, not misled,

We follow where before us runs

The vision of the shining ones.

'Not where they seem their signals fly,

Their voices while we listen die;

We cannot keep, however fleet,

The quick time of their winged feet.

'From youth to age unresting stray

These kindly mockers in our way;

Yet lead they not, the baffling elves,

To something better than themselves?

'Here, though unreached the goal we sought,

Its own reward our toil has brought:

The winding water's sounding rush,

The long note of the hermit thrush,

'The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond

And river track, and, vast, beyond

Broad meadows belted round with pines,

The grand uplift of mountain lines!

'What matter though we seek with pain

The garden of the gods in vain,

If lured thereby we climb to greet

Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet?

'To seek is better than to gain,

The fond hope dies as we attain;

Life's fairest things are those which seem,

The best is that of which we dream.

'Then let us trust our waterfall

Still flashes down its rocky wall,

With rainbow crescent curved across

Its sunlit spray from moss to moss.

'And we, forgetful of our pain,

In thought shall seek it oft again;

Shall see this aster-blossomed sod,

This sunshine of the golden-rod,

'And haply gain, through parting boughs,

Grand glimpses of great mountain brows

Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen

Of lakes deep set in valleys green.

'So failure wins; the consequence

Of loss becomes its recompense;

And evermore the end shall tell

The unreached ideal guided well.

'Our sweet illusions only die

Fulfilling love's sure prophecy;

And every wish for better things

An undreamed beauty nearer brings.

'For fate is servitor of love;

Desire and hope and longing prove

The secret of immortal youth,

And Nature cheats us into truth.

'O kind allurers, wisely sent,

Beguiling with benign intent,

Still move us, through divine unrest,

To seek the loveliest and the best!

'Go with us when our souls go free,

And, in the clear, white light to be,

Add unto Heaven's beatitude

The old delight of seeking good!'

~ John Greenleaf Whittier ~