To Suck Out All the Marrow of Life

Lord God,
grant that I may live deliberately,
confront the essential facts of life,
learn all it has to teach, and not,
when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.

Help me to live deep
and suck out all the marrow of life,
to put to rout all that is not life,
to cut a broad swath and shave close,
to drive life into a corner,
and know it by experience,
and show by my life that I did not hastily conclude
that it is the chief end of man here
to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Amen.

(based on lines from Walden, chapter two, by Henry David Thoreau)