Three hours of tempest and three days of night; Thick darkness, thunder-burst, and lightning flash; Millions engulfed, millions in prostrate plight, Grovelling as slaves that feel or fear the lash, Mingling their groans and cries with grind and crash Of crags the cyclone's catapult impels, Whose shrieking flails the fields and forests thrash. Wild o'er the land roused Ocean's anger swells; Fierce Flame's prophetic tongue the final doom foretells. Three hours of stormful strife;--then all is still. Save for a Voice that universe might hear, Proclaiming what hath happed as Heaven's high will, Dispensing pardon and dispelling fear, Drawing the righteous nearer and more near. Anon He lifts the curtain of the sky! The midday sun no more their minister; Greater hath arisen; and glories multiply As angels in their gaze earthward and heavenward fly. He greets them as a shepherd greets his flock; Shows them His wounded side, His hands, His feet; Then builds His Church upon the stricken Rock, Where flow life's healing waters, limpid, sweet, As infant innocence, that joys to meet Its great Original. With holy hand He ministers, bids death and hell retreat, And singles twelve from out the sainted band To sow with gospel light the furrowed, tear-worn land. Then follows the story of the Nephite golden age, and this by a period of apostasy from God and the final overthrow of the people, concluding with the coming of the Gentile races to the promised land and the advent of the Seer, Joseph Smith, who shall make known through the Book of Mormon the otherwise unknown history of the western world. The Gentile comes, as destiny decrees, To Joseph's land of wonders held in store. Freedom his watchword, sons of Freedom these, Like to the favored bands that long before A refuge found upon this sheltering shore. But champions of right oft wrong the right; Oppressed become oppressors in an hour; And now, as day that pushes back the night, The strong the weak assail, enslave, and put to flight. Nor yet can fate forsake them. Japheth's hand 'Gainst Jacob's wrath-doomed remnant still prevails. Tyrants oppress him from the motherland; The Lord of hosts a champion arms and mails, To match whose might no human power avails; Nor grander cause or chieftain e'er came forth. Him as its sire a new-born nation hails, And fain would crown him, spite his will, his birth, Did Heaven vouchsafe such king to shame most kings of earth-- Real though oft recreant sons of Deity, Builders, o'erthrowers, of imperial thrones, In wrongful act of rightful agency Drenching with blood, paving with human bones The path to power, gruesome with tears and groans. Their lives a failure? God a failure? Nay; What'er betide, the soul that sins atones; And He who casts the parts all mortals play, Succeeds He ever, His the night, and His the day.