Harriet Monroe

From “Notes of Travel”

IT was a queer country your harsh Lord gave you,

Great Brigham, whom I see coated and curled

In bronze before me in the public square!

It was a scraped and shining skeleton,

Gnawed to the bone long since at God’s first breakfast

And thrown away to bleach out in the sun.

Yet here He led you—

The Lord and his vicegerent Joseph Smith—

He ordered you

To take the dead earth from His niggard hand

And set His Throne up by the salty sea—

The little bucketful of ocean, poured

Over the desert’s feet between the hills.

And so you starved and prayed,

Thirsted and starved and prayed through the lean years,

Keeping the faith, digging your little ditches,

Making the desert blossom as the rose.

You married many wives,

And got you many children to fulfil

The special order whispered in the night

To His apostle by the Lord Himself—

The God of Abraham, of Saul and David,

Of Solomon and other lustful kings.

And here, tithe upon tithe, stone upon stone,

Your saints built up His throne unto the Lord

From plans the angel taught your hand to draw:

His new Solomon’s Temple, heaven-remembered,

To rise again here at the western gate,

And prove His glory in these latter days!

Great Brigham, sleeping now under the desert

With all your wives,

What summary vengeance have you meted out

To that ironic angel?

He alone builds

Who builds for beauty, shrining his little truth

In stones that make it fair.