Page:Poems Larcom.djvu/249

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at the beautiful gate.
233
AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE.
LORD, open the door, for I falter,—
I faint in this stifled air;
In dust and straitness I lose my breath;
This life of self is a living death:
Let me into Thy pastures broad and fair,
To the sun and the wind from Thy mountains free;
  Lord, open the door to me!

There is holier life, and truer,
  Than ever my heart has found:
There is nobler work than is wrought within
These walls so charred by the fires of sin,
Where I toil like a captive blind and bound:
An open door to a freer task
  In Thy nearer smile, I ask.

Yet the world is Thy field, Thy garden;
  On earth art Thou still at home.