| 895 of them? We have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into the treasury of the United States for lands which we are not allowed to possess; our chartered rights have been taken from us; fifteen thousand of our people are now exiles in Illinois and dare not return to their lands in Missouri, for the penalty is death. O, ye Americans you boast of liberty! of religious freedom! of protection of life and property! Gracefully your proud flag floats in the breeze of every clime saying, to the menials of other lands, "I overshadow a land which is an asylum for the oppressed of all nations," yet your own citizens, (the poor Mormons,) are robbed, mobbed, and plundered with impunity. Your prairies have drank our blood: your dungeons have heard our groans-your gloomy prisons have witnessed the cold blooded assassination of their leaders. O tell it not to the tyrants of oriental lands: let not the crowned heads of Europe know of the oppression which has been wrought in a free republic, lest they scoff at you in derision and say you boas [boast] of liberty, yet you cannot protect your own citizens.
Mr. Editor, it does seem to me that the press and all lovers of their country, should speak in tones of thunder in condemnation of the oppression, persecution and abuse the Mormons have received, instead of giving publicity to the statements of such renegadoes [renegades], and such a lawless banditti, as all acquainted with the facts, must know our traducers to be; for if such things are suffered now, and do not receive their merited rebuke, and punishment, because the sufferers are unpopular, and be marked out to receive the vengeance of their traducers and then farewell to American freedom.
Yours, &c.,
E. M. WEBB.
POETRY.
For the Times and Seasons.
THE SKY,
BY W. W. PHELPS.
"The sky the sky-the clear blue sky"- The roomy space where clouds appear,
O how I love to gaze upon it! And terrify with awful thunder;
The upper deep of realms on high- And then to give our hearts good cheer,
I wonder when the Lord begun it? We see the rain-bow arch'd up yonder.
There systems roll in endless light, The universe of worlds, en masse,
(Aphelion or a perihelion;) So charmingly spread out, all over,
A noiseless round of day and night, The everlasting looking-glass,
Jehovah's beautified pavilion. The molten mirror of Jehovah!
The trackless way, where spirits go, The sky the sky-so bland and fair,-
From this cold world of stinging pleasure; O how I love to stand and view it!
To where they see, and taste and know, And when it "falls," may I be there,
Eternal life, the "heavenly treasure." To see the "King of Kings" renew it.
The Times and Seasons, Is Printed and Published about the first and fifteenth of every month, on the corner of Water and Bain Streets, Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, by JOHN TAYLOR, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR.
TERMS.-TWO DOLLARS per annum, payable in all cases in advance. Any person procuring five new subscribers, and forwarding us Ten Dollars current money, shall receive one volume gratis. All letters must be addressed to John Taylor, editor, POST PAID, or they will not receive attention.
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