Birthday

By Vesta Pierce Crawford

(In Memory of the Organization of the Relief Society
Ninety Years Ago)

Mists of many years have fallen on Nauvoo,
But the women brave who labored there
This day in glowing memory live anew,
And from altered arch of time and space
They reach their eager hands to us,
For we as daughters of that steadfast race,
Have sought to follow where they passed
And find the widow and the orphaned one;
In paths where want and sorrow walk
Still work of love and charity is done;
And yet we could not serve so well,
Or seek with faith for wisdom’s road to go
Had you not set an ensign on our way,
O, valiant sisters of the long ago!

(1932)