---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Kleinman, Bertha A.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 14
number: 6
published: 1911-04
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Bertha A. Kleinman, "The Song of the World," *Improvement Era* 14, no. 6 (April 1911): 526–527.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1406unse
  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: improvementera1406unse
start_page: 526
end_page: 527
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1911-04)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1406unse
  publication_year: 1911
  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 1911, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The Song of the World

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t: V— v- -V—+—V ±±v A^ =£ 2d- mong the most beloved of heav'n I be formed in virtue's mould, in e - ter - ni - ty ap - pear, That dwell upon the earth. To fill a ho-ly place. With them in glory too. 1 The Song of the World. (For the Improvement Era.) A bard made rhyme on the king's highway, A migrant minstrel bold. And all who tarried might hear his lay — The pilgrim worn or the courtier gay, For he was glad, and he sang all day A wondrous song of old.

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THE SONG OF THE WORLD. 527 The king swept by with hisjpageantry, Nor harkened ever a strain, No alms to a vagrant minstrelsy, While he of the realm's first majesty Must hie him away on his embassy — Away from the blest refrain. A knight in his armied panoply Charged forth at the tocsin call, For he was a regal errantry, To fight for a liege and a dynasty — The song and the singer for such as he Had 'chantment never at all. The martman's visage was old with care, As over the hill he climbed; With gold elusive and hard to spare, W hat mattered to him the day was fair, That out on the highway over there, The song of the world was rhymed? They passed him by thro' the gladsome day — The wonderful minstrel seer — A hurrying, motley pageant they, The viceroy and the poppinjay, The love-lorn churl and the maiden gay, With never a pause to hear. They passed him by on the highway old, And they and their days are gone — The king and his court, with their tawdry erold, The churl and the maid with their love untold — 'Tisonlv the minstrel glad and bold, Who lives in his wondrous song. Bertha A. Kleinman.
