A Paraphrase by Eugene Field

It’s a verse paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus teaches his disciples in Matthew 6:9–13 of the Bible. Field retains the meaning and order of the original nearly perfectly, but transforms it into rhyming lines with a steady meter.

Field is clear about his intentions—he's not trying to reproduce scripture verbatim, but rather to express it in his own poetic style. The title signals to the reader that this is an interpretation, a creative act of devotion rather than a direct quote.

The changes focus more on structure and rhythm than on theology. He rearranges some phrases to improve the meter, consistently uses "debts" where the King James Bible switches between "debts" and "debtors," and adds "restore" in the line about temptation, which reflects his own interpretation.

The poem employs rhyming couplets, where each pair of lines ends with words that rhyme (like name/same, heaven/forgiven, and again/amen). This structure lends the poem a hymn-like, singable feel that enhances its devotional intent.

This is Field's paraphrase of "deliver us from evil." The term "restore" suggests that humans have a pure, original state, and that when we confront temptation or evil, God's role is to guide us back to our true selves — not merely to save us, but to rejuvenate us.

It comes across as genuinely religious. Field was writing in a culture where the Lord's Prayer was a fundamental part of everyday life, and the poem lacks the ironic distance you might anticipate from just a literary exercise. He approaches the source material with genuine respect and warmth.

Field's audience mainly consisted of middle-class American families in the late 19th century. His poems were published in newspapers and popular anthologies, meaning this poem would have reached readers who already knew the Lord's Prayer by heart. The paraphrase would have resonated like a beloved song played in a slightly different key.

The rhyme, meter, and intentional line breaks all contribute to its identity as a poem. Field also makes thoughtful word choices—like "restore" and the strategic use of dashes—that add depth beyond mere paraphrase, demonstrating how a poet carefully crafts language with purpose.