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A Prayer
by James Joyce
Again!
Come, give, yield all your strength to me!
From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain
Its cruel calm, submission’s misery,
Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.
Cease, silent love! My doom!
Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will!
I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.
Draw from me still
My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,
Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying
Him who is, him who was!
Again!
Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear
From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.
Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.
Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,
Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!
_________________________________
A Prayer is an 18 line poem by James Joyce, divided into three six line stanzas (sestets.) The poem is written in free verse, so there is no consistent meter or rhyme scheme. I learned a little bit more about the piece via the university of Buffalo library, link HERE:
The manuscript is a typescript of the poem “A Prayer,” which Joyce first published in Pomes Penyeach (Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1927; see Slocum and Cahoon A24), pp. [20]–[21]. It is the last poem Joyce wrote for the collection but the text here differs from the published version.
A Prayer details the Speaker’s paradoxical feelings of misery and ecstasy of love., using Joyce’s characteristic deftness with words and vivid evocations of various types of imagery.
Stanza One:
Again!
Come, give, yield all your strength to me!
From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain
Its cruel calm, submission’s misery,
Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.
Cease, silent love! My doom!
This stanza introduces the Reader to the Speaker, and we get a sense through his stream-of-conscious speech and the exclamations that he is distressed (“the breaking brain”).
As the stanza begins with “Again!” and the sixth line is “Cease, silent love!” we can infer that the torment of the Speaker lies in these opposites. He wants more of love and he wants that same love, which is tormenting him, to cease. He refers to it as his “doom.” Joyce’s Speaker feels predestined to a love that is both misery and desirous and inescapable.
Stanza Two:
Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will!
I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.
Draw from me still
My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,
Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying
Him who is, him who was!
The theme of paradox continues immediately in this stanza, with the Speaker’s love described as having a “dark nearness” and calling her “beloved enemy.” By requesting that she blind him, he is expressing a desire to experience that nearness, even if it means doing so hurts and destroys him.
Joyce cleverly describes the passion of love (or at least, obsessive love) and its capacity in some cases to completely consume one part of that pairing within the other. Joyce’s Speaker knows his individual self will disappear in nearness to his lover and he encourages that to happen – though he phrases it in terms that sound miserable rather than joyous. Abounding passion can be either consuming in a good or toxic way and the person caught in the thralls of it often does not know which. Joyce’s Speaker is addled by his emotions and trapped by them.
Stanza Three:
Again!
Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear
From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.
Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.
Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,
Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!
Joyce’s Speaker begins this stanza once more with “Again!” and also repeats a mentions his “breaking brain.”
This time, Joyce paints the picture of the two lovers “together, folded by the night, lay[ing] on earth.” In many respects, the third stanza is a repetition of the first, but with notable changes. The “low word” is revisited and again it has the effect of breaking the speaker’s brain. However, in stanza one, the low word is not directly attributed to the woman, whereas this time it is “her low word.” In the third stanza, the other change is that the Speaker is less reticent to “yield” to his lover. In the first sestet, he describes things as “submission’s misery” but here he says openly “Come! yield.”
The contrast between the two sestets is most fully made clear in their respective final lines.
“Cease, silent love! My doom!” vs. “Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!”
The first envisages a sought after destruction while the second invokes the language of a desired salvation. The paradox of the piece, and perhaps of passionate love more generally, is that the two things can refer to the same thing.
The frenzied emotion of A Prayer is probably more relatable in one’s youth than in older age, wherein those sorts of things can be uncomfortable. It came to mind while reading this that the wildness of passion is really only appreciated when it is reciprocated. If it is not reciprocated, then acting on impulses could lead to finding yourself on the wrong end of something like a restraining order. (Just imagine getting hundreds of text messages from some miserably passionate person you do not like, or try to re-imagine any rom com with the attractive love-smitten lead replaced by another much less attractive actor.) Passion without reciprocation leads to misery (which Joyce chronicles well in this poem) and reminds me of this meme:
Fortunately, Joyce’s third stanza lets us know that his Speaker appears to have been in the throws of reciprocated passion.