Literary Joseph Fielding Smith #10: Jane Mason’s Truth

Lesson 10 of the Joseph Fielding Smith manual discusses our search for truth, citing many of the prophet’s statements on how we are to obtain knowledge of the truth and on the value of truth in our lives. President Smith teaches that truth is something we should seek and value—ideas that can be found in the following poem.

We know rather little of this poem’s author, Jane Bulmer Mason Savage. Born in 1808 in Louth, Linconshire, she married Thomas Mason in August 1840 and bore a son, James Horby Mason, just over a year later. Sometime in the ensuing 5 years she joined the Church, wrote this poem and divorced. Together with James she emigrated to the U.S. in early 1849 and by 1860 she was in Utah. That year she married Levi Savage, Sr. as a plural wife. After his death she was apparently left in poverty and died “a pauper” in Salt Lake City in 1888. I haven’t yet found any other works that she wrote.

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Truth

by Jane Mason, of Louth

What is this, with meteor blaze,
Fills the nations with amaze?
As to earth she bends her way,
Turning darkness into day.

 

‘Tis a form, majestic bright,
From the upper realms of light;
Faith and Hope upon her brow,
Rob’d in love as white as snow.

 

In her joyful hands she brings
Present hopes of future things;
Cheers our long benighted way
With a bright millennial ray.

 

Hail! thou Heavenly Messenger,
Thee we long have waited for;
Glad our longing, aching eyes,
Turn from earth to Paradise.

 

Welcome, stranger, come and rest,
Dwell in every honest breast;
These, thy work, have understood,
Hail’d thee from the throne of God.

 

What I though some may think thee chang’d,
‘Tis themselves who are estrangM
Far from truth’s simplicity,
Wrapt in Babylon mystery.

 

Come, ye sons of mental night,
Fearlessly behold the light;
Why, so mad, your dross prefer
To the gold she would confer.

 

Hark! she speaks, ye sects give ear;
You’re condemn’d if you forbear:
Let your broken cisterns go,
Come where living waters flow.

 

See! she stands with open arms;
Calls you, with unequall’d charms:
Cast your empty husks to swine,
Come, and taste her milk and wine!

 

Gospel Truth’s this seraph’s name;
Still unalter’d, she’s the same:
When all creeds and systems fail,
Truth Eternal will prevail.

Millennial Star, v9 n15,
1 August 1847, p. 239

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