---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Alfred Lambourne
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 21
number: 3
published: 1918-01
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: "Alfred Lambourne, “A Prayer,” *Improvement Era* 21, no. 3 (January 1918): 189."
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2103unse
  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: improvementera2103unse
start_page: 189
end_page: 189
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1918-01)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2103unse
  publication_year: 1918
  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 1918, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# A Prayer

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Lo, in our souls there is a fervent prayer,

Which we beseech, O Lord, be not in vain:

The young, the pure, the innocent, the fair,

The helpless aged, those all ruthless slain,

Their cries the sea hath heard, the land their groans;

They sink to death beneath the choking waves,

The bird of prey flies o'er unburied bones,

Or they lie deep within the ocean caves.

And for the living, yea, our hearts must ache,

That chaos comes again to us doth seem;

Shall brutal strength a brutal right yet make,

To change the glory of the human dream?

O, from the blackness of this awful night

We wait Thy promise in, “Let there be Light!”

Alfred Lambourne