Whispering from the Dust: A Poem

Whispering from the Dust. (For the Improvement Era.) (isaiah 29: 3, 4.) Low from the dust an ancient, solemn voice, Tremulous with the message that it bears, Fraught with the tragic lesson of nations Fallen, and splendid races now no more, Is whispering us to hearken and beware; Beware lest pride that goes before a fall, And wealth abused, and transgressed laws of God, Bring us down, too, like them of old, 'gainst whom Jehovah camped and laid siege with a mount. We're not the first to flourish here and hold Dominion on this chosen, fertile soil, To found a great republic in this land, With botsted wealth, and pomp and splendid show; To build great eities on this vast domain, Whose towering spires mount to the skies, And hoard the mountains' wealth, and make the earth Yield up her treasure to the yeoman's craft. We're not the first to tyrannize the weak And rob the poor to swell the miser's gain; To crush beneath oppression's ruthless heel The toiling masses whom we pity not; To persecute the just, and prostitute The virtues that would make a nation strong. List, then, Columbia, to that whispering voice, The far-cry of the Nephites from the dust— They heeded not the sacred word of God, That he would have no Godless people dwell In this, the land he'd chosen for the free— List, then, and heed, ere thou art prostrate too. Louis W. Larsen. Burlington, Vermont.