The Conversation of Prayer
The Conversation of Prayer - meaning Summary
Prayer, Care, and Fate
The poem contrasts two figures—a child praying at bedtime and a man praying for his dying lover—and traces how their prayers become a shared, circulating force. Expectations of protection and comfort are unsettled: the man’s care may save his love, while the child’s innocent petition leads to a tragic reversal. The poem considers how prayer, care, and fate intertwine, producing irony and a shifting exchange of grief and consolation.
Read Complete AnalysesThe conversation of prayers about to be said By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs Who climbs to his dying love in her high room, The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move And the other full of tears that she will be dead, Turns in the dark on the sound they know will arise Into the answering skies from the green ground, From the man on the stairs and the child by his bed. The sound about to be said in the two prayers For the sleep in a safe land and the love who dies Will be the same grief flying. Whom shall they calm? Shall the child sleep unharmed or the man be crying? The conversation of prayers about to be said Turns on the quick and the dead, and the man on the stair To-night shall find no dying but alive and warm In the fire of his care his love in the high room. And the child not caring to whom he climbs his prayer Shall drown in a grief as deep as his made grave, And mark the dark eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep, Dragging him up the stairs to one who lies dead.
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