|
 Times
and Rhymes from The Relief Society Magazine
of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints
So long as
there are homes
Where women beckon tired men,
Where children play, and then
Where thanks are given, duties done –
So long as there are homes
Where prayers are said to daily guide,
Where love and faith abide,
Where each dawn sees new tasks begun –
So long as there are homes
Remembering the Christmas star –
Though many nations war,
In darkness grope,
The loyal souls within these homes
Will still have hope.
Perfect
Trust, Eslie E. Barrett
July 1941
***
Our boys are
men:
Across the too-quick years they have
Leaped to the full stature of manhood.
Their limbs are straight; their cheeks against ours
No longer warm velvet.
They search for Reason; and have marked the world
For their conquering.
Yet, as the
virgin tints of dawn linger
Even as it is quickened into day,
So about their mouths and in their eyes
Loiters that glimpse of divinity
That was there when first we held them against our hearts.
Please, God, let not their sacrifice be in vain.
Mother’s
Prayer, Dorothy Clapp Robinson
November 1942
***
My child is
lost, as in Jerusalem
A child was lost long years ago.
Did his mother’s feet, in panic
Wildly seek him to and fro?
Did she, too, fear evil men?
And did her heart so dully beat?
Did she, in terror, scan the crowds
And call him in the empty street?
Did her fingers touch with longing
His recent kiss upon her face?
Oh, God, I pray that I like she
Find my son in a holy place.
The Lost
Child, Alice Morrey Bailey
November 1944
***
“Is it not
too bad?” they said –
When at her service someone read
She had been born and lived and died
In one small town.
Their cheeks, scarce dried,
Were wet again . . . “To spend her life
As child, as maid, as mother, wife,
In this narrow valley?”
Narrow
valley? Yes, it was true.
The hills were close and steep, the view
Cut off on either side, yet she
Looked at the stars. Instinctively,
Her thoughts reached up to higher things
And knew that more than birds have wings,
In a valley.
She heard
the first bluebird, or kept
Close vigil where a sick child slept;
Baked bread and cakes and sang the while;
Walked her Savior’s extra mile;
Then, when her children all were grown,
She died, and had not even known
This was a narrow valley.
Narrow
Valley, Sabin
June 1962
***
It was
nearly time to go.
His dimples were flags
When he looked at me.
Behind his eyes was a darkness.
No word freed him into the room.
”Lamb for dinner?” I asked. “I don’t care.”
But his words weighed like caring.
“Some pictures of the family?”
But now, “Nothing extra,” he said,
Barely clearing the fence of the word.
On the way in the car
There was little but silence
Pillars of it . . . and careful notice
Of everything outside whirling by.
At the moment of parting
I tried to focus my camera
Adding to twenty-two years
Of futile attempts.
We slipped the bolt of goodbye
Finding no words to free us.
Drafted,
Bernice Ames May 1965
***
A cry –
A wild cry
Exultant as a canyon wind,
Defiant as an unleashed storm.
Following the dark journey of my sleep
Came the howl of a coyote,
Nudging me into breathless hearing.
She was on the cliff above the river.
This was no awful cry,
No summons to the kill,
No mourning for a mate.
With head flung high she filled the night,
While hurling a challenge to eternity
With all her being,
Free and unafraid.
And I heard.
Sheep on their bedground heard,
Stirring uneasily.
I drifted down again to sleep-filled places,
Back in her cave, she licked her puppies’ faces.
Coyote,
Peggy Tanmgren
November 1966
***
Standing
here – a bit too close –
I wondered if that daub of red
Meant anything beside the bit of blue.
It’s such a tiny fleck of color in the whole.
But once away – back to the vantage
That the artist had in mind –
I saw those two become the purpose of a setting sun
While greens and brown
That had been but disjointed dabs of paint
At once dissolved into the majesty of trees,
Each speck, brushed deftly into place.
Each doing its small part,
Was vital to the work when seen complete.
Then why should I not look to him who placed me here
If my work seems, as yet, unclear to me?
Am I the red of sunset or the green of tree?
He who knows, waits but for my heart to ask
To show me where to stand that I may see.
Impressiionist Painting, Linda Lorraine
Olson
May 1969
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