The Pocket R.L.S.
by
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Part 4 out of 4
us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it
may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to
come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation,
temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down
to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another.
*
PRAYER AT MORNING
The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating
concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to
perform then with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness
abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our
business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary
and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the
gift of sleep.
*
PRAYER AT EVENING
Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and
the hour come to rest. We resign into Thy hands our
sleeping bodies, our cold hearths and open doors. Give us
to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling. As the
sun returns in the east, so let our patience be renewed
with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so let our
loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitations.
*
Blind us to the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from
our memories, take them out of our mouths for ever. Let
all here before Thee carry and measure with the false
balances of love, and be in their own eyes and in all
conjunctures the most guilty. Help us at the same time
with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down
when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or
our integrity; touch us with fire from the altar, that we
may be up and doing to rebuild our city.
*
We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of
many families and nations gathered together in the peace of
this roof, weak men and women subsisting under the covert
of Thy patience. Be patient still; suffer us yet a while
longer;-with our broken purposes of good, with our idle
endeavours against evil, suffer us a while longer to
endure, and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to
us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these
must be taken, brace us to play the man under affliction.
Be with our friends, be with ourselves. Go with each of us
to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of
watching; and when the day returns, return to us, our sun
and comforter, and call us up with morning faces and with
morning hearts-eager to labour--eager to he happy, if
happiness shall be our portion--and if the day be marked
for sorrow, strong to endure it.
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