The poem is a 'prayer'.
Answers
Explanation:
Prayer has long been a topic for poets, as the following ten classic poems about praying and prayer nicely demonstrate. Ranging over five centuries, these prayer-poems show some of the greatest poets in English getting to grips with prayer as a way of communicating with God, but also with each other as we try to find the meaning and value of prayer, especially in times of hardship and war, or at momentous and significant times in our lives (such as the birth of a son or daughter).
Anonymous, ‘A Medieval Morning Prayer’. How to begin our whistle-stop tour of the best poems about prayer? How about going back to the fifteenth century and to a prayer thanking the Lord for seeing us through the night all right and keeping us away from the Devil:
Jesu Lord, blyssed thou be,
For all this nyght thou hast me kepe
From the fend and his poste,
Whether I wake or that I slepe.
In grete deses and dedly synne,
Many one this nyght fallyn has,
That I my selve schuld have fallyn in,
Hadyst thou not kepyd me with thi grace
George Herbert, ‘Prayer (I)’.
Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth …
As George Herbert (1593-1633) lay dying, he sent his poems to a friend Nicholas Ferrar with the instruction that his friend should publish them or destroy them, depending on whether he thought they were any good. Herbert is now revered as one of the greatest devotional poets of the Early Modern period. ‘Prayer (I)’ is a sonnet which sees Herbert offering a succession of synonyms or images for prayer, ranging from communion to ‘reversed thunder’ to manna from heaven and even simply ‘something understoodCan prayer be put into words? This is one of the greatest poems about the act of prayer partly because it acknowledges the fact that there’s something about prayer which escapes or transcends ordinary language.
Robert Burns, ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’. This poem shows just what a great satirical poet Robert Burns could be. Like John Betjeman’s later poem ‘In Westminster Abbey’, ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ – a poem from 1785 – uses the form of a prayer to expose religious hypocrisy and ruthless self-preservation – here, the self-preservation of ‘Holy Willie’, a church elder:
O Thou, who in the heavens does dwell,
Who, as it pleases best Thysel’,
Sends ane to heaven an’ ten to hell,
A’ for Thy glory,
And no for ony gude or ill
They’ve done afore Thee!
Anne Brontë, ‘A Prayer’.
My God (oh, let me call Thee mine,
Weak, wretched sinner though I be),
My trembling soul would fain be Thine;
My feeble faith still clings to Thee.
Not only for the Past I grieve,
The Future fills me with dismay;
Unless Thou hasten to relieve,
Thy suppliant is a castaway …
So begins this poem by the author of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, who was also the best religious poet among the Brontë siblings. Anne Brontë calls upon God to take her to Him, describing herself as a ‘castaway’, in a nod to William Cowper’s famous poem of that name (a big influence on the Brontë sisters, especially Anne).