---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Townsend, Joseph Longking
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 17
number: 4
published: 1914-02
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Joseph Longking Townsend, "Primordial. A Poem," *Improvement Era* 17, no. 4 (February 1914): 304.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1704unse
  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: improvementera1704unse
start_page: 304
end_page: 304
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1914-02)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1704unse
  publication_year: 1914
  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 1914, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Primordial. A Poem

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304 IMPROVE WENT KRA
mounted Dent and moved carefully away with his man and packs
into the perils of the night.
Where to go became a problem. They followed up a dry
gulch which echoed like an empty barrel, — they climbed out over
a steep sand-hill, crossed a flat, broken country, and behold they
were lost. No familiar point rose out of the gloom to guide them,
and no star glimmered through the clouds above. They had
stopped in a patch of dried sand-grass and shadscale, and dismi uniting, they slipped the head-stalls back over their horses' ears,
and stood wearily by while the hungry creatures nibbled the stale
provender.
I TO BE CONTINUED.)
Primordial
Somewhere I've heard a melody that lingers in my ears,
So plaintive, sad and tender, that my eyes oft fill with tears,
A strain of half-remembered tones, a chord in minor key,
Repeating o'er and o'er some theme of unknown minstrelsy.
The low, sweet tones of woodland airs, the murmur of a shore,
The plaint of rustling, wind-swept plains, that moan forevermore;
A solitude on mountain tops where life seems like a dream;
The lonesome, silent lake's domain, the strange, white desert's gleam,
The canyon's rugged cliffs and crags, the northern lights aflame,
All these intone that melody, but tell not whence it came.
Again, I've heard it in my dreams, a singer's low refrain.
A rhapsody of love's sweet hope, a threnody of pain:
And ever through the music thrills the undertones I hear,
A measure of heart-longings, of joy, of grief and fear;
An ill-defined foreboding, an expectancy, a wraith
Dispirited, and wailing of his unrequited faith:
And I wander from my dreamland, from its fantasies and fears,
Ever hearing its sad murmur ling'ring on thro' all the years.
Methinks it is a memory from some primordial day,
An echo from a far-off strand where summer breezes sway
The lotus in the limpid pools, the palm, the vine, the rose, —
That land of far-off yesterdays, one feels, but never knows.
Joseph Longking Townsend.
Jan. 1, 1914