---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Coleman, Guy C.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 20
number: 3
published: 1917-01
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Guy C. Coleman, "The Stars: A Poem," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 3 (January 1917): 206.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2003unse
  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: improvementera2003unse
start_page: 206
end_page: 206
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1917-01)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2003unse
  publication_year: 1917
  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 1917, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The Stars: A Poem

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—

206                         IMPROVEMENT ERA

     Glancing inside one might have guessed that the last rays of
the setting sun had been imprisoned there, until the shadows had
made it too dark for them to seek the west. In the parlor the
young people were gathered about the piano, singing. In the
dining room the small children were playing games. Mr. and
Mrs. Brown sat there watching them. They were thinking of
the lonely man across the street.
     "Aren't you glad that we will not have to face regret when
tht years of our lives grow few?" he asked as his arms stole
around her.
      "And aren't you glad," she whispered, as her head found a
resting place on his shoulder, "that we have been able to give
them a heritage that is worth while?"
      The great stone house across the street was in darkness and
the shadows seemed to concentrate about it. Mr. Gordon sat by
the library window and watched the trees melt into the darkness.   Like a pantomime his past life rose up before him. The
darkness of the house seemed to mock him.
      He turned on the light and taking his diary, wrote in an
unsteady hand: "This day I learned that it is harvest time and
I have planted nothing."

Ogden, Utah

                                 The Stars

                   Long, long ago,
        I often   viewed the starlit sky.
        I   saw the twink'ling   stars
        And wondered why they were so high,
        And why they did not fall, and whose they were?
        Then sweetly, mother said, "An angel holds each lisht
        To guide the weary wand'rers through the night."

                  There came a time
        When I did gaze upon the sky,
        And doubt that childish dream,
        My skeptic moods to satisfy!
        I   knew, as all the wise ones know, that stars
        Were from this world of ours apart, were planets old,
        I   sneered, and cast aside that    dream   of old!

                  But now I know
        .That dear, old, childhood dream is true.
        That God sends evening stars
        To light the way for me and you;
        And in their streams of light, this message sends:
        "Mv stars are lights of universal harmonv.
        And though apart, they guide direct to me."
Tcbiona, Utah                                                 Guy C. Coleman.