---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Frost, Grace Ingles
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 20
number: 5
published: 1917-03
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Grace Ingles Frost, "The Weakling: A Poem," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 5 (March 1917): 430.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2005unse
  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: improvementera2005unse
start_page: 430
end_page: 430
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1917-03)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2005unse
  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 Weakling: A Poem

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430                    IMPROVEMENT ERA

      "I doubt," says Albert J. Beveridge, "if any man can be a
great speaker who does not have in him the religious element."
It is this "religious element" that puts him in genuine sympathy
with humanity and its struggles and strivings, and awakens in
him the deep conviction concerning truth and right, that always
finds utterance in clear, strong speech.
     Eloquence is truth aglow. It is a great soul's heart throbs
set to words. It is more. It is the earnest plea of a soul in
which is blended the simplicity and honesty of a Lincoln, the
zeal of a Peter and the courage of a Paul.

                        The Weakling

         Who 'bides with lips set close when tongues are loosed,
         To heap some fellow-creature with abuse,
                  Just or unjust,
         Who raises not a voice that would defend,
         Nor turns those barbed arrows from a friend,
                 The weakling is.

         Who with a silent cowardice doth stand,
         While base Oppression devastates the land,
                  Though it perchance,
         Touch not the nearer precincts of his own,
         Flesh of his flesh and bone of his own bone,
                  The weakling is.

         Who born and cradled in the warm, smooth lap
         Of luxury is e'er content to nap
                  The hours away,
         While others by the sweat of brow must win
         Their daily bread, escapes not from the sin
                 Of weakliness.

         Who hastes not to make strong each rank of right,
         Nor lifts in clarion tones her slogan's might,
                   Where finds he place?
         With those, the puny minions, that bewail
         Not desecration's tomb, 'tis they who fail,
                  Earth's weakling sons.
                                            Grace Ingles Frost.