---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Curtis, Theodore E.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 12
number: 9
published: 1909-07
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Theodore E. Curtis, "The Dispensation of the Fulness of Times," *Improvement Era* 12, no. 9 (July 1909): 733.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1209unse
  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: improvementera1209unse
start_page: 733
end_page: 733
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1909-07)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1209unse
  publication_year: 1909
  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 1909, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The Dispensation of the Fulness of Times

<!-- page:733 -->

THE TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH OF YOUTH.                                       733

                     Peoples are reaped and garnered as the grain,
                     And only that persists which is   the truth:
                     Be strong when all the days of life bear ruth
                     And fury and are hot with toil and strain:
                     Hold thy large faith and quell thy mighty pain:
                     Dream thy great dream that buoys thine age with youth.

                     Thou art an eagle mewed in a sea-stopped cave:
                     He poised in darkness, with victorious wings,
                     Keeps night between the granite and the sea,
                     Until the tide ha? drawn the warder-wave,
                     Then from the portal where the ripple sings,
                     He bursts into the boundless morning   — free!   Atlantic Monthly.
Beaver, Utah.

     THE DISPENSATION OF THE FULNESS OF TIMES.

                               {For the Improvement Era.)

                Awake and arise, all ye slumbering nations!
                The heavens fling open their portals again.
                The last, and the greatest of all dispensations
                Has burst like a dawn o'er the children of men.

                The dream of the poet, the crown of the ages,
                Of which all the far-seeing prophets have spoke
                That glorious day only dreamed by the sages
                Is yours.  Oh ye slumbering nations, awake!

                Lo, Israel from his long slumber is waking.
                The stars, and the moon, and the darkness are gone;
                And on the high towers of our Zion is breaking
                The gold of the promised millennial dawn.

                Now lift up your voices in song and in story
                Now let the war flags of all nations be furled.
                For truth, heaven-born in her beauty and glory,
                Is   marching triumphantly over the world.
                                                                Theodore E. Curtis.
Salt Lake City, Utah.