---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Frost, Grace Ingles
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 10
number: 3
published: 1907-01
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: "Frost, Grace Ingles, \"A New Year's Prayer: A Poem,\" *Improvement Era* 10, no. 3 (January 1907): 224."
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1003unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera1003unse
start_page: 224
end_page: 224
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1907-01)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1003unse
  publication_year: 1907
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1907, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# A New Year's Prayer: A Poem

<!-- page:224 -->

224 IMPROVEMENT EliA.
in South Africa, not politically, but commercially, and our govern-
ment will feel bound to protect the commercial interests of its
great financiers. Hereafter we must be heard in all matters relat-
ing to the government of Central Africa. This is commercial impe-
rialism which promises to mix us more completely with the nations
of the world than our political imperialism.
Salt Lake City, Utah.
A

<!-- page:224 -->

NEW YEAR'S PRAYER.
Before me lies a clean, white page
Just o' er the leaf, one marred by error and by many a tear.
Father, help me in the present year,
To be more brave, more strong, more kind to all, both strange and dear.
1 do not ask that I be free from care
For I would feel its touch, that I may share
The woe of those less fortunate here.
I do not ask for worldly power, or an excess of gold,
Lest in a prosperous hour a blight fall on my heart,
And it toward thee grow cold.
But this I ask—that I may ever grasp the jewels at my feet,
And not be ever striving for those things
Which lie so far beyond my reach.
Help me to prize the small things grandly done,
And thus prepare for greater things to come.
Help me to think not of what might have been, and what I might have done
But think of what I yet may be,
And of the victories there may yet be won.
Help me to know the true from false, that in temptation's hour,
I may cleave unto the gold and spurn the dross.
Help me to build my house, not on the sand,
But on a sure foundation;
That when the floods shall come and winds shall blow,
It still may stand, invincible and grand.
These are the blessings that I crave from thee;
Not only for this year, but those to come.
I ask them in his name, who died for all humanity
Thy Son. Amen.
Grace Ingles Frost.
Salt Lake City, Utah.
