JT-53-EPISODE,

EPISODE, To the memory of Elder Joseph Nesmith of Virginia.

Let the proud muse delight herself to raise,
The names of heroes to immortal praise;
Let her record the wonders they have done,
What feats achiev’d, and battles they have won.

An humble muse shall now vibrate the lyre,
My bosom swell, and all my theme inspire
To tell the thousands--thousands yet unborn,
The heavenly virtues that my friend adorn.

My God convinc’d him in his sportive youth,
The ways of error, and the force of truth,
And turn’d the current of his mind away
From all the sins of this adult’rous day.
He cloth’d him meekly with his mantling love,
And touch’d his lips with hallowed fire above;
God gave command that he should now declare,
And far abroad the name of Jesus bear.
His mind enraptur’d with celestial views,
With meek consent the heavenly call pursues,
Apostle-like, untaught in priestly schools,
Nor fill’d with jargon, known in priestly rules;
He deals the word direct, by Jesus giv’n,
And points us out the narrow way to heav’n.
His mind capacious--richly stor’d with sense,
Sublimely soars with charming eloquence.
He paints creation in poetic strains
Describes the beauties of the flow’ry plains;
And tells the grandeur of the rising hills,
The copious rivers and the gliding rills.
Like birds of lofty wing in airy haste,
Ascending high above the world’s broad waste,
To shun a storm from thund’ring skies below,
And seek a rest that none but they can know,
So he with rapt’rous wing yet more sublime,
Devoutly soars above our stormy clime,
And seems to travel in the regions where
He plucks, and wears ambrosial laurels there;
In strains seraphic he his message tells,
And like a flood his flowing bosom swells.
He seems to ope the golden gates of bliss,
To show the saints, who bask in endless peace;
He tells the glories of the eternal throne,
In transports sweet, and language all his own.

Like eagles wing their far ethereal flight,
Above the meaner birds from mortal sight,
He mounts aloft on wings sublimely high,
And brings glad tidings from the upper sky.
His art is simple and his language chaste,
And all his metaphors seem rightly plac’d;
His gestures suited to the theme he tells,
From reason cool to burning rapture swells;
He pours the torrent of his soul around
On all who listen in amaze profound.
Like flowing streams increase their flow’ry sides,
And form, at least, extensive sea-like tides;
So have his flowing accents sweetly rung,
And heav’nly strains increased upon his tongue.
He seems acquainted with the human mind,
With logic and philosophy combin’d;
He shows the nature of immortal laws,
That God’s the author of effect and cause;
Dead matter can’t produce itself and live,
In thousand forms like we behold it thrive;
Nor could more chance together dumb and blind,
Transform her image into Newton’s mind.
And as we see all matter round us grow.
In bodies move and in the water flow,
As suns illume, and globes revolve in space,
And none can leave their orbit’s destin’d place;
A pow’r must form, a pow’r divine control,
The myriad worlds that in wide ether roll;
All nature speaks, and loud declares a God,
Who form’d and rules the Universe abroad.

In him our God has humbled human pride,
In him, the Christian tempers all abide;
And like resplendent jewels richly shine,
When smooth’d and polish’d from the diamond mine;
The things of earth, he would esteem as dross,
And glory only in a Savior’s cross.

The world’s deceit--her clamors on his name,
Her tongue of slander, and her tongue of fame,
Can never lure this humble man of prayer,
To taste again her poison’d pleasures there;
The wealth he seeks is not of sordid dust,
Nor gold that cankers, nor the hoards that rust;
He’s plac’d his treasure in the upper skies--
Eternal life is his immortal prize.
He lives by faith, by faith he sees the land,
Where faithful saints with crowns of glory stand;
A blissful portion he enjoys below,
And tastes the pleasures sinners never know.

He preaches freedom in the Savior’s name,
To cheerless captives sunk in lawless shame;
He opes the gospel like expanded gates,
Where boundless grace for starving thousands waits--
Declares the gospel is the rule of life,
The bonds of union free from war and strife;
For church discipline ’twas by Jesus given,
To rule and guide the high-born sons of heav’n.
His souls abhors the rage for party names,
That kindles passions into fearful flames;
And separates the fold asunder wide--
That makes the Christians in their forms divide;
He loud proclaims that Christian union sweet,
Where all distinctions in one int’rest meet;
Where useless forms and names are done away,
And saints rejoice and all together pray.

Go on my brother--preach the word of God,
May Jesus guard you in the heavenly road;
I’ll follow on, and meet you in the land,
Where we’ll rejoice in one celestial band.