On My 14th Birthday, My First View of Eternity

Eliza. R. Snow's wandering prose in "My First View of a Western Prairie" reminds the reader that early Latter-Day Saints had more than just a religion on their mind. Her poem begins with the more human issue with an exodus: missing home. It appears that Snow sees the vast landscape of the prairie and can't help but be reminded of the epic natures of the classics. Her new home becomes parallel to "the Ioninian fields," then just eclipses them with the spirit of "The Western World!"
As good as writing I see this as, I also can't help but think that she is reassuring her choice to go West with the saints. Perhaps Snow got help with her move by romanticizing, not spiritualizing, the event.

In Richards' "On my Fourteenth Birthday" she outlines a subtle difference between her innocence being taken not only by aging, but also by her religious belief in eternity. As if her birthday didn't buzzkill her youthful feelings, she exclaims that "she is just on the brink" of "earth-life passing away." That doesn't sound like a great title to a birthday party to me.
I had two responses to what she says is her "wiser reflections." This congruence between coming of age and professing religious knowledge reminds me of a bat-mitzvah, or any coming-of-age ceremony. On the other hand, Richards not only mentions her youth being robbed, but her adulthood too, as she caps in her Donne-esque closer "life, death, ye are passing away." By trading a mortal lens for an eternal view, it sounds like her life has lost its salt, ironically. then again, maybe that understanding just comes with age.