O Lord, Our Father

O Lord, Our Father - meaning Summary

Prayer Turned Into Indictment

Mark Twain’s poem adopts the language of a devout communal prayer to expose the moral perversity of asking God to bless savage wartime violence. It lists brutal acts—shelling fields, burning homes, driving out widows and children—and frames them as requests offered in the name of love and patriotism. The effect is bitterly ironic: ritual piety is shown complicit in cruelty, highlighting hypocrisy and the corrupting rhetoric of war.

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O Lord, our father, Our young patriots, idols of our hearts, Go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth From the sweet peace of our beloved firesides To smite the foe. O Lord, our God, Help us to tear their soldiers To bloody shreds with our shells; Help us to cover their smiling fields With the pale forms of their patriot dead; Help us to drown the thunder of the guns With the shrieks of their wounded, Writhing in pain. Help us to lay waste their humble homes With a hurricane of fire; Help us to wring the hearts of their Unoffending widows with unavailing grief; Help us to turn them out roofless With their little children to wander unfriended The wastes of their desolated land In rags and hunger and thirst, Sports of the sun flames of summer And the icy winds of winter, Burdened in spirit, worn with travail, Imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it - For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, Blast their hopes, Blight their lives, Protract their bitter pilgrimage, Make heavy their steps, Water their way with their tears, Stain the white snow with the blood Of their wounded feet! We ask it in the spirit of love - Of Him who is the source of love, And Who is the ever-faithful Refuge and Friend of all that are sore beset And seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen