In 1890, he collected and published his poems in a book entitled Poems of Grace and Truth. It contained 343 pages. With the exception of a small book entitled Bible Readings, and the limp-cover binding of a song-book, this book of poems was the first cloth-bound book ever made at the Gospel Trumpet publishing office. The press-work is imperfect owing to the poor stereotyped plates from which it was printed. A number of beautiful poems were written since the publication of this book and therefore were not included in it.
His longest poem was his Meditations on the Prairie. It occupies eighty-four pages of the book mentioned and is written in ten-syllable iambic verse. It touchingly describes with beautiful imagery the author's acquaintance with and his subsequent marriage to Sarah A. Keller, and the circumstances that led to her deception and separation from him. His own description of its origin, as given in the preface to the poem, is as follows:
In the summer of 1873, the author took a mission-field in Nebraska, much of which had just been settled the previous year. My companion had died one year previously. Just before going West a correspondence was arranged with Sister Sarah A. Keller, which soon kindled into a glowing flame of love. A year later I returned and we were happily joined in marriage. With her precious company I came again to this blooming plain, where one year was sweetened with the most transporting conjugal bliss. In 1875 we returned to Ohio, where life and labors flowed on in uninterrupted happiness, until in 1884 the dear object of our love was deceived by the wily foe and torn from our soul, a crisis that threatened our frail life, and which we survived only by the grace of God.
In the fall of 1887, while on an extensive Western tour, we came into a new part of the great prairie, which strikingly reminded us of our travels on the new plains twelve and thirteen years before. There the Spirit touched our mind with vivid recollections of that cherished one, who made for us this prairie a blissful Eden. An inspired imagination also portrayed what dire wreck of our own life might have ensued from the crisis of broken love had not the grace of God averted the sad issue. This cast us on the sod beneath a load of gratitude, where the poem was inspired as our heart's humble tribute for Heaven's pity and sustaining arm.
A quotation from this poem appears in [Chapter XV] of this book.
Brother Warner was a great admirer of nature as the handiwork of God, and several of his poems are on nature subjects. What we give here are in most cases but selections from the poems named, the omissions being indicated by stars.
AUTUMN
Gone is the spring with all its flowers,
And gone the summer's verdant show;
Now strewn beneath the autumn bowers,