A Tribute: A Poem

DIVINE MISSION OF THE PROPHET JOSEPH SMITH. 259

of his career, in order to fix his position. Once establish the basic line of right, and you could find Joseph Smith. To what to him was duty, he was as constant as a fixed star. He is one of those of whom the poet said,

His record has outlived him.

Coming generations will revere his name, and among the leaders of his time, he will be known as the greatest. The looms of time are never idle, and the busy fingers of the weavers are ever weaving, as into a tapestry, the many threads and colors that make up our several lives; and when these are exposed to critics and admirers, there shall be found none of brighter colors or of nobler pattern than this life of Joseph Smith, the "Mormon" prophet. His mission was indeed that of a great prophet. The scorn of a religious world, the persecutions from narrow-minded zealots, had no weight with him; and he truly said of himself, "I am accustomed to swim in deep waters, to meet a frowning world, to face bitter and unrelenting foes. I have cut the gordian knot with truth, diamond truth."

A TRIBUTE.

Stand by, Old Time, with your measured tread and your shadowed wings of gray, For I, with iny feeble pow'rs to do, would paint you anew today. I would sweep from your true old visage the lowering man-made

guise. And make it kind as an angel's with love in your old, dim eyes.

I would take from your knotted fingers the scythe with its blade all bare, And cast it back to the idle hands that place its cold gleam there.

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260 IMPROVEMENT ERA

I would take from your hold the wheels of war whose clangings never cease, And plant in its stead the scrolls of light and the olive branch of peace.

Benign Old Friend! with your frost-hung wings and your grizzled strands of hair 'Tis men who wind up the wheels of strife and cast them everywhere.

From your sun-lit dial the years of life fall quietly down as dew, And only the Sons of Earth fling forth the ruin ascribed to you.

The snows of age from your whitened hands heap silently year by year, But men's deceits blanch the hairs of youth in a single day of fear. 'Tis men who hew down the cities' pride that gladdens the lonely plain, Who pillage the holy, templed heights and scatter the altar's flame.

'Tis men who stamp out the prints of art 'neath the engine wheels of war. Who hide in the marble dust of blight the flowers of golden lore: Who plunge through the vestal halls of peace in the groves of Elysian shade, Who sow the tares of desolate waste where the fields of grain are laid.

'Tis men who dash, in their seething rage, at the steadfast forts of truth, Who batter the walls of sanctity and sever the years of youth: Who crush and blight, who fell and slay with the scythe of their own decline, And, hiding their guilty hands, would stay thy quiet advance. Old Time! Bertha E. Anderson.