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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 | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| And set His Throne up by the salty sea— | |
| The little bucketful of ocean, poured | |
| Over the desert’s feet between the hills. | |
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| And so you starved and prayed, | |
| Thirsted and starved and prayed through the lean years, | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| To His apostle by the Lord Himself— | |
| The God of Abraham, of Saul and David, | |
| Of Solomon and other lustful kings. | |
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| And here, tithe upon tithe, stone upon stone, | |
| Your saints built up His throne unto the Lord | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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. | 35 |
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