"PROPHECY AND POESIE ARE SISTERS TWIN'': FEMINISM, THEOLOGY, AND NATIONALISM IN THE POETRY OF HANNAH TAPFIELD KING, AUGUSTA JOYCE CROCHERON, AND MARY J. TANNER by Courtney Hatch A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah December 7, 2023 Approved c~·Dr.E Dr. Jennifer Reeder Hatch 1 Courtney Hatch Dr. Emily Petersen MENG 6960 Thesis 7 December 2023 “Prophecy and Poesie are Sisters Twin”: Feminism, Theology, and Nationalism in the Poetry of Hannah Tapfield King, Augusta Joyce Crocheron, and Mary J. Tanner “Though many lovelier abound, Then these my eager heart has found; Still, when in time to come, we see Books of rare thought, perchance there’ll be A place within thy fond thought yet For the ‘Wild Flowers of Deseret’.” (Crocheron 3) Augusta Joyce Crocheron chose apologetic words to introduce her maiden publication. It is possible that Crocheron, a Latter-day Saint woman, a second wife in a plural marriage, and a prolific poet worried about how her writing would hold up to the stereotypes placed upon the women of her faith. Possibly with quivering pen, she confessed her awareness that she would not be remembered as one of the great poets of her time. With a powerful “perchance,” Crocheron published anyway. Unbeknownst to her, this particular publication would grace the World’s Columbian Exposition just twelve years later. In the halls of the Woman’s Building, “there [was] a place” indeed for Latter-day Saint women’s poetry, including Crocheron’s “Wild Flowers of Deseret” (Crocheron 3). This project will focus on three collections of poetry brought from Utah to the World’s Columbian Exposition: Hannah Tapfield King’s Songs of the Heart published in 1879, Mary Jane Mount Tanner’s Fugitive Poems published in 1880, and Augusta Joyce Crocheron’s Wild Hatch 2 Flowers of Deseret published in 1881. In all three collections, King, Tanner, and Crocheron begin with an introduction voicing their insecurities and reassuring their readership that they do not claim their collections will be remembered long after their deaths. Crocheron explains, “this volume is presented not so much for its literary excellence . . . with this explanation, I hope the reader with whom I am unacquainted will overlook its deficiencies” (Crocheron 1) while Tanner confesses that “it is with fear and trembling I place my feet on the literary platform” (Tanner v). King, the oldest of the trio by 30 years, asserts more confidence than the other two, hoping that “the chords I strike on my simple lyre re-vibrate on the ‘harp of a thousand strings,’ that lies deep (often mute) in every heart” (King vi). This project works to highlight overlooked poetic works by women who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 19th century United States, countering the idea (by both 21st century audiences and the authors themselves) that their works are not sophisticated enough for study. This thesis works to recover and re-center the lost or forgotten works of women and will demonstrate, through a close reading of two poems in each collection, their literary merit. In selecting three collections published within three years of each other in a single community, this project will also give insight into how 19th century Latter-day Saint women understood themselves as women within their faith and as hopeful citizens of the United States. In discussing these women and their faith, I will follow the style guide provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and hereafter refer to the church either by its full name or, simply, the Church. When referring to members of the Church, I will refer to them as Latter-day Saints and avoid the terms Mormon or Mormonism. I acknowledge my positionality as a scholar who is a practicing Latter-day Saint and hope that my insights into a faith I have not Hatch 3 only researched but have also practiced are beneficial to other scholars engaged in the work of studying Latter-day Saint poetry and literature. While engaging in a close reading of each of these texts, I rely heavily on frameworks constructed by various scholars of feminism. Here you will find threads of Lindal Buchanan’s understanding of the Rhetorics of Motherhood as well as Susanna Morrill’s unveiling of 19th and 20th century women’s literature as a site of theological discourse. Jonathan Stapley’s work on Latter-day Saint women and historical conceptions of power within the Church are also crucial to this analysis. When extended the opportunity to represent the territory of Utah and Latter-day Saint women at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Latter-day Saint women had to decide which writings by women would best represent them on the national, and even international, stage. They brought their representative collection, Songs and Flowers of the Wasatch along with four texts by Eliza R. Snow, two pieces of nonfiction by Augusta Joyce Crocheron and Hannah Tapfield King, along with six other poetry collections by Mary J. Tanner, Augusta Joyce Crocheron, Hannah Tapfield King, and Emily Spencer (Wells 178). The poetry collections I focus on by King, Crocheron, and Tanner can tell us a great deal about how Latter-day Saint women perceived their own womanhood, how they displayed their patriotism at a time when citizenship in the United States was kept from them, and how they used poetry to interact with institutional theology and express their own theological ideas. Hannah Tapfield King’s patriotism along with her theological understanding of both America’s place in the world and woman’s place in society and the Church come together in her poem, “Isabella.” Named for Queen Isabella I, Spain’s fifteenth-century queen who united the country through her marriage to Ferdinand II and helped to fund Christopher Columbus’s famous Hatch 4 1492 expedition, the poem celebrates the United States as a land chosen by God, Columbus as a kind of prophet or savior of that land, and Isabella as the powerful force that makes all of these workings of God possible. In centering Isabella’s role, King emphasizes the importance of women’s work and power. She begins the poem declaring “Oh, Woman!” (King 19) with capitalization emphasizing her intent to use Isabella as a type for all women and the power they wield. King continues, declaring that, “Genius, power, kingdoms, / Thrones . . . /Sceptres, subjects, ministering spirits, round / Hover round thy footsteps, to watch thine eye / To catch thy lightest word” (King 19). King covers a lot of ground here—declaring that Isabella commands the attention of the intellectual world, governments, the common people, and even the spirits who do God’s work. In Isabella, King may find an earthly manifestation of what she believes will be the place of good, faithful women in the next life. In the Latter-day Saint restoration scripture, the Doctrine and Covenants, nineteenth-century saints learned of the kind of life they could expect if they lived their religion in their mortal lives. Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants promises a heaven where faithful saints will “inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths . . . then shall they be gods, because they have no end. . . .because they have all power” (Doctrine and Covenants, 132:19-20) along with earlier references to receiving “crowns of glory upon [their] heads” (Doctrine and Covenants, 109:76). Likewise, King refers to Isabella and Ferdinand as a couple who “reigned conjointly, / Hand and heart united in their regal work” (King 20). In Isabella, King finds an example of the kind of woman who yielded this type of command and power and proceeds to demonstrate the good that one woman in that kind of position can do. King works to justify this honoring of Isabella’s power and authority by also emphasizing how despite her position, Isabella continued to embody the Victorian ideals of womanhood of Hatch 5 King’s generation. King emphasizes that even though Isabella had command of the aforementioned, she “still is woman—still her nature holds / Pure, unsullied, as a queen should be” (King 19). The term queen, here, seems to stand in for the capitalized Woman that King refers to at the beginning of her poem. King’s assurances that Isabella had not become too masculine or hardened by her power reflects a similar technique used by contemporary suffragists who published things like the 1886 Woman Suffrage Cook Book in an effort to assure anti-suffragists that women could maintain their feminine roles while being trusted with more political power. Isabella I also functions as an interesting figure for King because she was a woman who had political power before she was married. In staying committed to her arrangement to marry her cousin, Ferdinand II, even when other options were available and even encouraged, Isabella’s marriage had a massive impact on the development of her country and many future generations. It doesn’t seem too far of a stretch to suspect that early Latter-day Saint women who practiced polygamy, and found strength and comfort in the practice through a future vision of how their sacrifice would build God’s kingdom on the earth as well as have consequences throughout the eternities, could find, in Isabella I, some evidence that their marital sacrifices would also have powerful, unfathomable consequences. King demonstrates this when she says that Isabella: To Ferdinand—himself a king—she brought Her throne, her kingdom, subjects, and herself And laid them at the feet of him to whom More, more than all, she gave her loving heart (King 20) King emphasizes all of Isabella’s greatness and power before depicting her placing all of those things at the feet of her husband in marriage. This image further emphasizes Isabella’s continued Hatch 6 femininity embodied in her submissiveness, rendering her unthreatening to the status quo. This depiction also parallels what King might have felt was a similar experience among Latter-day Saint women in sealing themselves, and their posterities, to their husbands who may or may not have been married to other women. Some of these women brought their own little kingdoms of children, born to other earthly fathers, into their sealed family. King, herself, was the last woman sealed to Brigham Young before his death, which she did only for eternity while she was still married for time to her living, but less religious, husband. King may have seen herself, also, as bringing her own kingdom of nine children to the feet of the prophet-president. While the depiction arranges Ferdinand as an almost god-like figure to whom sacrifices are given and the authority in their marriage as well, King complicates this image of female servitude by focusing the rest of the poem on how Isabella’s superior nature and intellect wielded the true power to make change. It is in combining Isabella’s wealth and political power with her purity and femininity that she is made the perfect vehicle for enabling Columbus in, what King views as, his divinely appointed mission. King elevates Columbus to the level of a foreordained prophet, or even a savior or god himself when describing Isabella’s discernment of him saying, “She has an eye at once to read the man: / A heart to feel he bears upon his form / The duplicate of Him who gave the mission” (King 20). King draws a parallel between Columbus and Christ as she describes Isabella as recognizing Columbus as chosen to enact a God-appointed mission because he looks like the Lord Himself when approaching her. This deification of Columbus is clearly troubling to a modern audience when considering the sweeping consequences of colonialism, but for King, her portrayal may have been informed by an experience shared by Wilford Woodruff, the future president of her faith and then apostle, Hatch 7 St. George temple president, and church historian. In August 1877, just two years before King’s publication, Wilford Woodruff saw a vision of some of the United States’ early leaders asking for their temple work to be done—an act that would grant them access to the highest kingdoms of heaven. In what Woodruff and King viewed as a group of admirable, heaven-ready heroes, Woodruff included Columbus. He shared: . . . the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. . . .[I] called upon brother McCallister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others; I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them (Journal of Discourses 229). While nineteenth century Latter-day Saint nationalism is complicated by the fact that the United States nation was not yet ready to claim them as full citizens, Woodruff’s experience is evidence of the Saints’ ownership of American folklore and a desire to claim American heroes as their own. Later, in 1898, Wilford Woodruff would bear testimony of this event in General Conference saying, “those men . . . were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. They were choice spirits, not wicked men” (General Conference Report 90). King’s glorifying of Columbus, here, falls in line with the narrative being passed down by church authorities and works to legitimize the Church’s place in the nation. While King depicts Ferdinand as unmoved by Columbus’s request, calling him “worldlyminded” (King 20), Isabella is praised for having “spirit eyes” to see that Columbus “Was a man of destiny! a man of God!” (King 20). These “spirit eyes” might be what King considered Wilford Woodruff possessing when seeing Columbus. In this poem, it is a woman who is having Hatch 8 this gift of vision, though differently than Woodruff’s contemporary example. King’s earlier mention of Isabella’s admirable qualities of purity and submission enable her to be the one to endorse Columbus because of a spiritual impression that Ferdinand is closed off to. King’s depiction reflects her religious community’s emphasis on gaining knowledge through spiritual feeling saying that Isabella, “felt the man of God / A messenger direct, and hence prepared / To learn his mission and obey his voice” (King 20). This experience of feeling that one is listening to a messenger from God is reflected in many accounts of early Latter-day Saint women being converted to their faith through similar spiritual manifestations while listening to different missionaries, apostles, or prophets. King, herself, describes her conversion through similar feelings as she discussed Mormonism with her dressmaker, Lois Bailey, whom she described as “my teacher, my priestess” (Reed 105). Bailey gave King religious materials that King “read with the spirit and understanding” (Reed 105). In using similar language to describe Isabella’s conversion to Columbus’s purposes, she not only justifies Isabella’s actions to her audience, but she also elevates the spiritual intuition of women, giving an example of how a woman with strong spiritual discernment can shift the course of history through her commitment in response to those feelings. In creating these connections between Isabella and her fellow Latter-day Saint women, King almost places Isabella within their fold. These parallels seem to assure her audience that Isabella is “one of them” to whom they can look for inspiration in executing appropriate female power to enact divinely mandated change. She further utilizes language associated with conversion describing Isabella as “[Columbus]’s proselyte, and to the grave, his friend” (King 20) and “a queen / Stood forth as the apostle of his cause; / A queen, a woman, a proselyte of truth” (King 20). Not only does King continue to emphasize Isabella’s womanhood and Hatch 9 Columbus’s deification, she also names Isabel as one of Columbus’s apostles, emphasizing that she enthusiastically takes up this role of discipleship despite her power and place as a queen. King seems to be mindful of her female Latter-day Saint audience who believed in an incredible depth and breadth of female power and influence while also balancing that power and influence within the confines of what was authorized as the proper female sphere in their religious institution. King’s depiction of Isabella makes it clear that, in her interpretation, the United States would have not become what it is, and the establishment of her religion would not have happened in the same way, if not for Isabella’s conversion to Columbus’s cause. Through Isabella, King argues that it was because of the conviction and support of one woman that these things were rendered possible, thus elevating the historical influence of female conversion. In this portrayal, King mirrors a modern-day Latter-day Saint understanding of the role of Eve, but one that was not contemporary with King’s writings. While modern Latter-day Saint teachings consider the role of Eve in the fall of man to be divinely inspired, with Eve being the one with the spiritual vision required to understand its necessity, this positive celebratory stance of Eve was not yet established during King’s time. King’s portrayal of Isabella as a type of Eve who saw the opportunity of entering a new world through Columbus and “first received” the opportunity “by woman’s gentle heart” (King 20) was ahead of her time. King could see that Columbus’s successful entrance into a new land with new opportunities rested on whether “this noble burst of woman’s feeling triumphed” (King 22), which opens up possible parallel understandings of Eve also being an empowering force on which God’s plan relied. King does not outright glorify Eve in the same way that Joseph F. Smith’s 1918 vision of “glorious Mother Eve” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:39) does, but it does set a foundation of looking past the Hatch 10 foregrounded male figures in our sacred narratives to the women making practicing a similar feminine virtue of being able to discern the things of God and changing the course of history through the actions allowed her in her sphere. King’s depiction of Columbus foreshadows a future Latter-day Saint understanding of Adam’s awareness of Eve’s essential role in enabling his progress saying that Columbus, “bowed at the feet of her / Who’d nobly won for him the victory” (King 22). Columbus may have been the one crossing the ocean, but Isabella, (and King seems to infer womankind in general), made it possible for him to do so. In creating these parallels, King works to center women’s influence in the iconic stories of the founding of the United States and of her faith. King continues to allude to other scriptural depictions of women to pedestalize Isabella and further justify women’s work within her faith. In the final scene between Columbus and Isabella, King says, “[Isabella] wept tears upon his noble head” (King 22). With King having already established Columbus as a Christ-figure, the scene parallels the biblical scene of a woman in Luke 7 washing Christ’s feet with her tears. It reads, “a woman in the city, which was a sinner . . . stood at [Jesus’s] feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment” (Luke 7:37). Both sets of tears represent the devotion of each woman’s discipleship, but the story expands on King’s portrayal of woman’s admirable spiritual strength. In Luke, when the apostles criticize this woman for her behavior, Christ defends her, declaring hers the superior discipleship and saying to Peter, his most senior apostle, “Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears” (Luke 37: 44). This allusion continues to add to King’s depiction of women as active and trusted players in God’s kingdom within their accepted spheres of influence. Hatch 11 King’s praise of both Isabella and Columbus came at a time when Latter-day Saint women were working to combat negative depictions of women in their faith as powerless and brainwashed when the territory of Utah was lobbying for statehood. By demonstrating Isabella’s immense influence and affiliating her with Latter-day Saint women, King may be arguing for the less-public power asserted by the women in her faith. Her endorsement of Isabella and Columbus as American heroes demonstrates her patriotism for a country that, so far, had refused to accept her people as citizens. The female organizers of the Woman’s Building at the Chicago World’s Fair chose Queen Isabella as a central figure to honor. and Jennifer Reeder explains how “Utah women joined in the veneration of Isabella of Castile. . . .Although Isabella had no direct connection to Utah, the effort to memorialize her contributed to an institutional, rather than a vernacular, memory (Reeder 293-294). This constructions of an institutional memory served their efforts to more closely aligns themselves with the discourse of American citizenship. Hannah Tapfield King’s collection was not the only poetry at the Chicago World’s Fair that worked to prove the patriotism of Latter-day Saint women. Augusta Joyce Crocheron’s collection, Wild Flowers of Deseret, also contained themes of nationalism and pride of place through a female lens. Her titular poem, “Wild Flowers of Deseret” was also included in the poetry collection, Songs and Flowers of the Wasatch edited by Emmeline B. Wells specifically for the Chicago World’s Fair. It was this particular poem, among the others chosen, that these women thought would best represent them to the world, and, in it, Crocheron uses contrasting images of a desert wasteland along a thriving landscape to argue for the civilized Americanness of her people. Hatch 12 At the time of the Chicago World’s Fair, Utah was still three years away from statehood, having applied and been rejected repeatedly over the last 44 years. Paul Reeve explained some of the reasoning behind the United States’ continual rejection, saying: Congress and the federal government were the gatekeepers and as such held the power to decide who was fit for democracy . . . The United States was a Protestant nation and the Constitution a Protestant document . . . in the eye of the Protestant majority, members of the ‘Mormon race’ were incapable of democracy . . . Polygamy, theocracy, and Mormon clannishness were deemed too un-American. (Reeve 6-7) Crocheron, King, and Tanner’s published works were being displayed to a larger audience than any of their collections had ever seen, and the stakes of a possible change in public opinion about their fitness for American citizenship was hanging in the balance. Crocheron begins her poem by emphasizing the persecution endured by her people. Her first image emphasizes the safety they have sought saying, “Guarding the hidden desert land, / The Rocky Mountains nobly stand” (Crocheron 1). Here, the mountains do not just stand as a symbol of strength but also as a natural fence or fortress guarding her people from outside forces. By inferring that her people would need protection, she is also accusing the United States government of unfair treatment, emphasizing her people’s need for protection. As she continues the depiction of Latter-day Saint pioneers traveling into the territory of Utah, she creates two images of the valley that work as foils of one another. When her people first arrived, the image is “dusty and gray, and parched and dry” (Crocheron 1) with an intense July heat. She emphasizes how barren the land was with “Only the sage’s ashen green, / And cactus here and there between” (Crocheron 1). Her emphasis on the barren land seems to serve two purposes. First, it erases Indigenous communities from the narrative. Crocheron describes Hatch 13 their new home as one in “solitude” (Crocheron 2) and depicts a landscape untouched and uninhabited. This provides her an easy way to dodge uncomfortable questions about colonialism and ignore any other displacement besides that of her own people. Paul Reeve also pointed out the racial implications for Latter-day Saints in publicly disassociating themselves from Indigenous people. Crocheron seems to be aware of how “outsiders persistently imagined Mormons conspiring with Indians against white Americans and sometimes descending below the level of savages themselves” (Reeve 11). By erasing them from the narrative, Crocheron can avoid any associations that others might use to argue against her whiteness and Americanness. Second, it establishes a setting wherein the Saints can prove their embodiment of American values. If a group of people can come upon a land with such little progress and potential and turn it into a land that is producing and thriving, they must value progress, hard work, and selfdetermination. In emphasizing the greatness of their task to build a sustainable life in such a place, Crocheron is paralleling their arrival and establishment to other sacred American folklore stories of pilgrims providing a miraculous foundation for the country. In this, Crocheron emphasizes the similarities between those who are already accepted as American heroes and her people who she hopes will be granted full American citizenship. If Crocheron’s people could create a flourishing community where nothing would thrive, they could prove their value as citizens of the United States. Crocheron juxtaposes this image of a barren, hopeless landscape with the Utah territory she credits her people with creating. Rather than lifeless, “now a hundred streamlets run, / With emerald borders, then were none” (Crocheron 1). Where there once was dust, Crocheron now describes “crystal waters foaming,” as a physical evidence of the Saints’ hard work in accomplishing the American Dream of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Reeder Hatch 14 explains, “Utah women took pride in the way they had ‘tamed’ the West. . . .For Mormon women, the process of settling a wilderness set them apart from their Eastern counterparts. At the same time the work of refining the rugged frontier proved Mormon women’s respectability” (Reeder 284). Not only did this prove their respectability, these descriptions of the land also glorified the work of women generally and the work of the Church as a whole. Susanna Morrill points out, “Mormon women writers glorified their Zion by describing the great change that came over the land when the pioneers entered the valley. Initially filled with barren, maleidentified, forbidding elements, the LDS community changed the very landscape with their virtuous lives and homes. The land became an earthly, female-identified Eden” (Morrill 195). Latter-day Saint women’s virtue, in Crocheron’s perspective, was so powerful that it caused the land around them to be flourishing in fertility. These contrasting images of the landscape also work within her faith community as proof of their status as God’s chosen people. Just as the children of Israel traveled in the desert and were rewarded for their obedience with miraculous water (The Bible, Exodus 17:1-7), Crocheron infers that the Latter-day Saint Utahns, too, have been marked as chosen. Crocheron continues to argue for her people’s chosen position with God as she describes how this water feeds the “thirsty earth denied” as “through the city’s streets it flows” (Crocheron 2). By emphasizing the abundance of flowing water, Crocheron creates another Biblical parallel to God’s promise to the Israelites in Exodus, which reads, “I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of the land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey” (The Bible, Exodus 3:8). With this parallel, Crocheron not only compares her people to the chosen Israelites and the territory of Utah to God’s Promised Land, but she also Hatch 15 compares the citizens of the United States who pushed her people out of their communities to the Egyptians who had enslaved the Israelites. Crocheron continues her criticism of the United States proclaiming that in the territory of Utah “a new Kingdom’s life [has] begun, / On freedom’s soil ‘neath a warm sun” (Crocheron 2). By characterizing the territory as “freedom’s soil,” Crocheron infers that the United States was not a land that was free for her people. She ends this criticism by claiming that the land they establish in the Utah territory, in contrast, “will be / The fairest home of liberty” (Crocheron 2). Fairest, here, works as a double entendre so that Crocheron can both assert that the community her people will establish will be the most fair and just in the cause of liberty compared to the United States while also being able to hide behind the less offensive meaning that the land will, simply, be the most beautiful. The word fair also carries racialized connotations, emphasizing Latter-day Saints’ contested whiteness. In all three meanings, Crocheron points out how her people and her territory already embody the American ideal of liberty. Crocheron’s narrative of her people being persecuted and being saved by the promised land of the Utah territory relies on the invisibility of the territory’s Indigenous population. In describing how they found the land, she claims that it was not previously occupied, saying, “No ancient ruin, grand and gray, / To mark a nation passed away; / But a new Kingdom’s life begun” (Crocheron 2). Her version of history, that there was no other nation or evidence of occupants in the territory, is less concerned with giving an accurate account of the area and more concerned with maintaining a narrative of a people who overcame their victimhood to flourish. If, in Crocheron’s extended metaphor, the Latter-day Saint pioneers stand in for the Israelites and American citizens stand in for the Egyptians, where do the territory’s Indigenous residents fit? While Crocheron directly quotes Isaiah 35:2 in describing “the desert blossom[ing] as the rose” Hatch 16 (Crocheron 2), inferring that her people have fulfilled this biblical prophecy, she seems to ignore a similar verse in Doctrine and Covenants 49, which clarifies that it is the “Lamanites [who] shall blossom as the rose” (Doctrine and Covenants 49:24). The term “Lamanite” would be understood by most of Crocheron’s Latter-day Saint audience as referring to Indigenous people. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ gospel topics essays explain, “While some early Latter-day Saints speculated about which specific groups were the descendants of Book of Mormon peoples, most considered the Native Americans broadly as heirs to Book of Mormon promises” (“Lamanite Identity”). Crocheron’s intent to connect her people to that of the Israelites while distancing herself from the Indigenous people around her serves her intent to appear more white and more American. Along with Hannah Tapfield King and Augusta Joyce Crocheron, Mary J. Tanner also composed poems that argued her people’s qualifications for American citizenship in her collection, Fugitive Poems. As a collection that was also chosen as a representative text for the Chicago World’s Fair, the inclusion of several patriotic poems in defense of the Latter-day Saints is notable. Reid Neilson discussed how highlighting their patriotism and Americanness was one motivation for Latter-day Saints in attending the World’s Fair. He explained: In retrospect, their prepared remarks seem designed to showcase the contributions of Mormon women in Utah to the greatness of America. To begin with . . . May Talmage highlighted the growing sophistication of literature and art in the Utah territory. She pointed out that although the Mormon pioneers had been driven from American civilization by mobs to the desolation of the Great Basin, they still celebrated the arts and sought after refinement in the tops of the mountains. (Neilson 98) Hatch 17 These collections stood as evidence of that refinement and as qualifications for full citizenship. While Tanner claims the United States as her country in “A Song of Zion” and adds to the establishment of an honorable historical narrative of the LDS pioneers through paralleling war poems in “The Pioneers of ’47,” it is her poem, “The Prophets” that best showcases her argument for her faith’s right to American citizenship. In “The Prophets,” Tanner considers the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith as fallen heroes for American freedom. Tanner emphasizes how both Smiths were “Free born Americans, / True loyal citizens” (Tanner 72), creating a connection between her subjects and her hopeful audience of non-Latter-day Saint Americans. Despite their citizenship in a country purportedly practicing freedom of religion, Tanner points out that they, “suffered and bled” (Tanner 72). Tanner’s accusations in the next few stanzas are direct. She demands that this story be told “long and loud” (Tanner 72) to every person in the country. Relying on anaphora, she urges all to: Tell to the merry crowd, Tell to the rich and proud, Tell to the poor; Tell that a martyr’s blood, Lies at their door. (Tanner 72) Tanner does not seem to leave anybody out of her accusations and emphasizes the importance of making the story of the Smiths’ martyrdom known through repeatedly imploring her reader to take up the cause of telling their story. Her insistence parallels the responsibility many Christians have been charged with throughout the New Testament up to the present day to “go quickly, and tell” (Matthew 28:7) of the miracles they have witnessed. While this charge is given most famously to Mary Magdalene at Jesus Christ’s tomb to make sure all know that Christ’s tomb Hatch 18 was empty, Mary Tanner’s evangelism is, instead, to make sure all know that Joseph Smith’s tomb was full, and the nation should feel responsibility in filling it. Tanner sets up this comparison between the Smiths and Jesus Christ in the previous stanza also through the allusion of blood lying on the doors of the Israelites. In Exodus 12:7, God tells Israel to “take of the blood and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses” (The Bible, Exodus 12:7). This blood symbolizes the future blood spilled by Jesus Christ. In alluding to this biblical symbol, Tanner strengthens the connection she is making between the leaders of her faith and Jesus Christ Himself. She not only compares the reasons for their deaths and the symbols surrounding their deaths but also their purpose and destiny through the image of crimson robes. She writes: Slain for the faith they bore, Crimson the robes they wore, Dripping with prophets’ gore Foul hands were red. (Tanner 72) Here, Tanner symbolically clothes both Smiths in crimson robes, molding them both into Christ figures slain for their cause. Their crimson robes are paralleled by the red hands, late in the stanza, which are dripping with prophets’ gore. This repetition of the image of the color red emphasizes whom Tanner blames for their deaths while also connecting them to a color associated with Christ’s liberation and a color associated with the United States. The Bible prophesies that in Christ’s return to the earth, he will be “clothed with a vesture dipped in blood” (Revelation 19:13). Isaiah explains that this crimson robe is symbolic of the sacrifice that Christ made by answering the question we might also ask Tanner of her protagonists, “Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?” (Isaiah 63:2). Hatch 19 In the voice of Christ, he answers, “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment” (Isaiah 63:3). Isaiah’s explanation of why Christ will return in red robes is not only remorseful but vengeful, paralleling the tone of Tanner’s stanza. By connecting the Smith’s to these verses through allusion, Tanner is pedestalizing both Smiths as Christ figures in an effort to more fully condemn the government she blames for their deaths. Tanner’s condemnation is complicated by her simultaneous vying for citizenship in the very country that she condemns. Not only does she connect her martyrs to comparisons with Christ, but she persistently connects them to the ideas of the American dream and being laudable United States citizens. The color red, here, fulfills both of these purposes. Red also serves as a symbolic color associated with the United States. Tim Marshall explained in his book A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols the significance of the color red in symbols associated with the United States: Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, . . . said the color . . . red [represented] hardiness and valour. . . . You’d think that would be that, but as it is every American’s flag, all Americans are free to interpret the colors as they wish. Some say the red is for the blood of the patriots who died in the Revolution, and some say it is for all those who have died fighting for the country. (Marshall 18) In emphasizing this crimson color next to descriptions of the Smiths as great American citizens, Tanner affiliates them with this interpretation of red as being associated with blood shed for two great causes—that of Christian martyrdom and that of American freedom. Hatch 20 Tanner’s condemnation of this kind of act on American soil comes to a climax when, after stacking these allusions to Christ and American patriots, she emphasizes the setting of these acts with bitter irony: “Here in America, / Glorious America, / Land of the free” (Tanner 73). These short lines, each ending with a punctuation mark, slow down the pacing of the poem, causing Tanner’s reader to look directly at her pointing finger declaring “Here” (Tanner 73) followed by an ironic praising of “Glorious America” (Tanner 73). That Tanner seems to be ridiculing the lived application of these American ideals is solidified two stanzas later when she proclaims, “Oh! What a mockery / Sounds the philosophy,” ending with the accusation that, “Freemen have changed” (Tanner 73). Again, Tanner presses the idea that those acting against her faith are, themselves, not living up to the ideals they use to pedestalize their American forefathers. Tanner’s argument that “Freemen have changed” (Tanner 73) is rhetorically useful in creating an imaginary standard of freedom under which the American people had lived in order to argue that somehow, in the 1840s, their behavior had suddenly fallen beneath that standard. Her argument relies on a dehumanization of Indigenous people and formerly enslaved African Americans, or at least a dismissal of their experiences, who had endured violence from the hands of freemen since before the country’s inception. To modern eyes, it is clear that freemen had, in fact, not changed, but possibly Tanner’s, and her community’s, understanding of the State and its willingness to use violence to bolster the dominant group had developed. Throughout the poem, Tanner relies heavily on Thomas Hood’s “Bridge of Sighs,” an 1844 poem honoring a woman who had taken her own life after being kicked out of her home. Tanner does not just allude to Hood’s poem but instead pulls four entire stanzas from the work, inserting them into her own. Tanner mirrors Hood’s style, so that the poem feels like it has been Hatch 21 seamlessly written by one author. The parallels she draws between Hood’s fallen protagonist and her own are clear. Hood creates a sympathetic depiction of a woman who turns to death as the only solution for being kicked out of her home just as Tanner sees her protagonists put to death and her people pushed to extreme circumstances by being driven out of their homes. Just like Hood’s female protagonist, Tanner sees the United States turning out the Latter-day Saints as leaving them homeless and condoning their death. With Hood’s poem being published the same year as the Smiths’ martyrdom, and immediately preceding the years of the Latter-day Saint exodus from the United States, Tanner might have found solace in Hood’s later works, which Robert Butterworth described as, “poems [meant to] specifically measure society against Christian values” (Butterworth 427). Tanner seems to have taken on the same task using the dual measuring sticks of both Christian and American values to evaluate 19th century American society. Tanner borrows from Hood’s pathos-rich rhetoric in listing all those who would feel the consequences of these deaths. As Hood humanizes his unnamed protagonist through reminding his reader of the “Fatherly, motherly, / Sisterly, brotherly” influences around her, Tanner, too, uses those lines and adds a reminder that her male protagonists were leaving behind, “The widows, and orphans,” (Tanner 74) in their families, hoping to garner up greater sympathy for them. Tanner also borrows from Hood’s use of Christian ideals to condemn society. Robert Butterworth points out that, in Hood’s work, he does not just blame those in the protagonist’s life for her death—he also condemns the structures and cultures in society that encouraged her family’s behavior. He explained, “Society more broadly . . . is implicated in the blame. Christian values have been abandoned: ‘Christian charity’ (44) is a ‘rarity’ (43), and the woman’s status as a fellow human being (‘One of Eve’s family’ [28]) did not cause her to be treated with Christian Hatch 22 love” (Butterworth 436). Tanner begins her poems with those very lines, blaming not just those who murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith but also condemning the society that perpetuated such treatment of her people. While Hood calls out society’s “cold inhumanity” (Hood 68) for leaving his protagonist without a home. Tanner takes it one step further, declaring, “shame to the nation! / And shame to the cause; / That would murder her freemen, / Dishonor her laws” (Tanner 76). Just as Hood points out where society has not lived up to its “Christian charity” (Hood 68), Tanner uses the United States’ own proclaimed ideals to show how it has not lived up to its laws and disgraced its cause for liberty. In a callback to her earlier crimson images, she boldly asserts that the murder of her faith’s leaders “stains the fair flag / Of our country with crime” (Tanner 76). While Tanner left the United States with her parents when she was 10 years old to cross the plains with the other Latter-day Saints, she still claims it as her country at a time when the US government was denying full citizenship to her and her community. While she is condemning American society on the one hand, she is still bidding for acceptance in American society on the other. She continues to espouse proposed American ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice while exposing how she feels the country has fallen short in executing those ideas in relation to her people. Interestingly, Tanner does make one adjustment to Hood’s poem. Where Hood explains how those who loved his protagonist had stopped loving her, saying, “Love, by harsh evidence, / Thrown from its eminence” (Hood 68), Tanner changes the line to read, “Truth by false evidence / Thrown from its eminence” (Tanner 73). While only a change of two words, the focus of Tanner’s poem shifts from emphasizing the loss of love as the source of greatest pain to emphasizing the denial of truth. While Tanner’s change may work to exonerate Hood’s original protagonist, who is treated harshly as a result of possible sexual misconduct, she also points back Hatch 23 to the American ideal of justice and exposes where the nation has fallen short. For Tanner, her poem is not made tragic by a lack of love but instead a lack of justice. Tanner’s poetical skills do not end at her engagement with a classic British poem nor with her various allusions to Biblical text. She also employs some clever wordplay in the poem. In stanza ten, Tanner gives an overview of the injustices the Latter-day Saints have endured for which she holds American society accountable. She references their persecution in Missouri— the site of the Hawn’s Mill Massacre and imprisonment of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in Liberty Jail. She writes: The plains of Missouri Are reeking and red, With the blood of the martyrs For liberty shed. (Tanner 74) Tanner’s alliteration highlights that not only are the Missouri plains red with blood, they are reeking, implying a rotting of the bodies of her people and of the character of those who committed the violent acts. Her last line holds multiple possible meanings. First, it labels the murdered Latter-day Saints as martyrs not just for the cause of faith but also for the cause of liberty. Along with the fallen American patriots honored for their sacrifice in the name of American liberty, Tanner adds the names of the fallen Latter-day Saints. Here is an obvious effort to point out how deserving they are of American citizenship, as they too have shed blood for the American cause. The line could also be read as American liberty necessarily having to be shed before their persecutors committed these acts. Their deaths are evidence of liberty shed, of freedoms lost or ignored. The third meaning Tanner invokes is a play on the jail in which the Smiths were imprisoned in Missouri. The ironically named Liberty Jail was more than a shed Hatch 24 when it held the Latter-day Saint leaders, but the insiders in Tanner’s readership may have given pause to see a reference to a “liberty shed” next to a remembrance of the blood-stained plains of Missouri. Tanner uses allusion in her twelfth stanza, as well, when she portrays the Latter-day Saints arriving in the Salt Lake Valley. In a jab at the United States’ lack of protection for the freedom of religion, Tanner states: [They] planted their banner In triumph to stand, O’er the home of the free In a lone desert land. (Tanner 75) Tanner declares the new “lone desert land” of her people as a place that is truer to the cause of freedom than the United States was. She parallels the cultural narrative of the founding fathers escaping a tyrant in order to begin a land that is fairer, free, and just, but in her story, they are fleeing the United States. These three collections also naturally worked as spaces for King, Crocheron, and Tanner to grapple with their own understandings of womanhood within their theology. Throughout their poems, all three feel out the edges of their place within their faith, contemplate the morality and responsibility of a poet’s life, and elevate the work of women as divine. Each prove Susanna Morrill right when she said, “Women were making significant theology during this time, but not in the ways we traditionally think about theology” (Morrill 199). One of those ways was through the images and allusions within their poetry. Emmeline B. Wells, who helped many of these Latter-day Saint women publish their work, seemed to agree with Thomas Paine’s reverence for the sacred work of poetry. Paine claimed that “the word prophet, to which a later times have Hatch 25 affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet” (Paine 19) while Wells pointed out a similar relationship between the two saying, “the germ of poesy . . . found response in the heart of women, whose prophetic inspiration wove the stirring and pathetic themes into song and story” (Wells 178). While none of the three ever name themselves as prophets within their pages, they each present their own unique, and unapologetically feminine, offerings to the larger Latter-day Saint theological discussion. Of these three poets, Hannah Tapfield King seems the most willing to push along the outlines of her faith to see where their sticking place is. In two different poems, King uses verse to both sing praise and pronounce blessings upon people she loves. Both poems are celebratory and declarative, but they also carry an undercurrent of questions about where women, and their poetry, fit in Latter-day Saint theology. King pulls from a feminine tradition of praising God through song as she rejoices in her son’s life being spared in her poem, “Lines: on the Restoration of Health to my Beloved Boy After a Severe Sickness Crossing the Plains in 1853.” Her poem begins by declaring, “My prayers are heard” (King 12) before moving into an actual prayer through verse. In this way, King’s poem could function as a Latter-day psalm. In line 11, King shifts to address God directly saying: O, mighty Father! Ever good and kind; How great thy gift! the God-like gift of mind! How fine soe’re the form which Thou hast given, Or features—moulded in the cast of heaven! (King 12) King uses her pen to pray a song of praise to her God. Where and when Latter-day Saint women could pray and preach publicly had times of both expansion and reduction, but in poetry, it Hatch 26 seems, King could find her own reliable avenue for making her prayers public. Poetry provided a structure that could both publish her ideas of faith and also camouflage any possible controversial or threatening ideas. With its double meanings and invitation for interpretation, poetry was a safe and acceptable vehicle for women to own their perspectives with the safeguard of denying any unacceptable content as an error in misinterpretation by the reader. In the lines written to her son, King declares her belief in God’s mercy and kindness. She also elevates the female body in her declaration of it being created in God’s image. She praises God for the gift of her mind, relishing in her position as poet, and declares her body as something of divine origin being “moulded in the cast of heaven” (King 12). Whether aware of it or not, King steps into a female Christian tradition of praising God through song and prayer. In the Bible, the only words officially credited to women are those in songs. Miriam is the first woman we see praising God through song in Exodus 15. It reads, “And Miriam the prophetess, . . . took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord” (Exodus 15: 20-21). This scene of Miriam, along with “all the women” performing psalms and singing prayers begins a feminine tradition seen throughout Christian scripture. In Judges 5, Deborah sings a song after Israel is delivered from the Canaanites: “I, even I, will sing unto the Lord” (Judges 5:3). Hannah also rejoices in her ability to declare her praise and faith through prayer and song, saying, “my heart rejoiceth in the Lord, . . . my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies” (1 Samuel 2:1). In the New Testament, Mary parallels much of Hannah’s prayer in her own song, widely known as the Magnificat. She, too, praises God and relishes in her influence through her divine calling, saying, “My soul magnifies the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. . . .for, behold, Hatch 27 from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things” (Luke 1:46-49). This tradition of women in scripture speaking in psalms or praying through song and verse continues into Latter-day Saint scripture as well. In the first book of The Book of Mormon, the book’s main matriarch, Sariah, gives a brief psalmic testimony, saying, “Now I know of a surety . . . that the Lord hath protected my sons and delivered them . . . and given them power whereby they could accomplish the thing which the Lord hath commanded them” (1 Nephi 5:8). In the book of Moses, in the Latter-day Saint scripture the Pearl of Great Price, Eve, too, gets the chance to sing praises. Moses 5 explains that “Adam and Eve blessed the name of God” (Moses 5:12) and that Eve, specifically, proclaimed, “were it not for our transgression we never should have had . . . the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient” (Moses 5:11). In the Latter-day Saint faith, the legacy of associating female preaching with poetry and song seems to continue even in the Doctrine and Covenants. Like other books of scripture, female presence and perspective is scant in the Doctrine and Covenants with just one section addressed to a woman out of the 138 sections it currently contains. In this section, Joseph Smith’s wife, Emma Smith, is told by God, “thou shalt be ordained . . . to expound scriptures, and to exhort the church. . . .And it shall be given thee, also, to make a selection of sacred hymns. . . .For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads” (Doctrine and Covenants 25:7, 11, 12). In these scriptural accounts, we find evidence of a space set aside for women to preach, worship, and theologize in sanctioned ways. While there has been push and pull over the appropriate time and audience for female preaching and prophesying over pulpits, it Hatch 28 seems there is a consistent thread of women being free to express their faith and feeling through verse. King, Crocheron, and Tanner enter this female space of psalming at various times throughout their collections. In these lines written after her son’s return to health, King parallels women in the scriptures who had voiced these psalms—namely Hannah and Mary. Upon seeing her son live, King declares, “The life now spared I dedicate to Thee, / With all the power thou dost give to me” (King 12). Her reference to power given to her from God is interesting considering controversial perspectives on early Latter-day Saint women’s understanding of priesthood and temple power. Further, her declaration mirrors that of another of the previously mentioned female psalmists, Hannah, when, after years of infertility, she gives birth to Samuel and promises God, “I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life” (The Bible,1 Samuel 1:11). King is inserting herself into a legacy of what Christian discipleship looks like in an embodied female experience. She does not compare her heartache over her child to that of God’s heartache (Latter-day Saint doctrine being that God is an embodied Father to a separately embodied Jesus Christ), but rather, she sees herself, understandably, in the other mothers mentioned in Biblical text, centers their uniquely feminine perspective, and copies their form of public worship through her form of writing. While King’s poem does follow the traditional subject of scriptural songs in praising God and Jesus Christ, she complicates it by also turning her dedication to Mary, the mother of Christ. In the beginning of her poem she functions as a Marian type in reflecting on the life given back to her son. Her first lines, celebrating her son Tom’s life, state, “My prayers are heard! / my tears were not in vain! / My loved Tom Owen is restored again!” (King 12). Latter-day Saint women at this time were writing dozens of poems about watching their children die. In many of these Hatch 29 poems, the speaker serves as a symbol or type of Mary who embodies the highest form of motherhood. Mary’s initiation into motherhood came with the two-sided commitment of giving life, which was outside of her control, and watching her child’s life be taken away, which was also outside of her control. It is possible that these women saw some of their burdens in Mary, knowing that when they committed to giving life, they were also automatically committing to seeing some of that life taken away. In their mourning of their children, they function as Marian types, centering uniquely female suffering. King’s poem stands out amongst these poems that mourn the death of children because in these stanzas her child is brought back to life. King, again, is looking at a Biblical story and highlighting the female experience in that story in a way that further legitimizes her own experiences and place within her faith. She is engaging in what Susanna Morrill describes as “Latter-day Saint women writers [using] popular literature— particularly poetry . . .—to argue for the theological importance of women within the patriarchal home, community, institutional church, and LDS salvational structures” (Morrill 185) paralleling both womankind with Mary and womankind with Christ. King invokes this image of a Marian mother at the opening of the poem and then returns to an imagining of Mary’s overlooked sacrifice, asserting that in the climax of His trial, Jesus, too, turns to His mother. Her description of Jesus portrays Mary as a key element of His success, saying, “Who, in that dark and agonizing hour / When death held o’er him high and mighty power, / Remember’d her, of whom He was a part” (King 13). Her phrasing here parallels other Book of Mormon depictions of men in struggle for their souls who then remember Jesus and find relief. Alma, in the Book of Mormon, experiences a parallel struggle for his soul’s salvation, typifying that of Jesus’s suffering in the garden and on the cross. Just as King’s depiction of Jesus reaches for comfort in the memory of His mother, Alma finds solace in remembering Jesus Hatch 30 Christ. It reads, “as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also . . . the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world” (Alma 36:17). Other characters in the Book of Mormon, like Enos, follow this same story structure of encountering extreme pain and reaching for the memory of their Savior. King takes this same structure and turns it, so that it is Jesus Himself who is looking for comfort and strength. While Latter-day Saint doctrine confirms that Jesus prayed to a separate embodied God, His Father, during His agony, King chooses here to depict Jesus remembering and reaching for His mortal mother, who she emphasizes is a part of Him. Next to these parallel scriptural stories of those in crisis reaching for the Savior, King is wondering at who is left for a Savior to reach to when He is the one in crisis. Edward Tullidge, in his account of The Women of Mormondom published two years before King’s collection, also voices this understanding of women’s suffering, through the symbol of Mary, connected to Jesus’s success. He wrote, “From woman, the love of Jesus for humanity. . . .’Twas she, in her son, who forgave sin; she who bade the sinner go and sin no more . . . and it was woman, in her son, who died upon the cross for the sins of the world” (Tullidge 540). Both Tullidge and King work to give greater credit to Mary, and therefore all women, within Latter-day Saint theology. King continues to center Mary’s experience as a representation of the private pains and sacrifices of motherhood. She describes Mary’s experience at the cross in lines 59-62: Who, at His feet, o’erwhelm’d with stunning woe, Sat mutely watching every deathly throe; Her soul absorbed in agonizing love, Perhaps was dreaming she would pass above. (King 13) Hatch 31 King’s reflection of Mary’s sacrifice comes after she herself has been witnessing her son’s “deathly throes” (King 13). In these lines, King both centers the biblical embodiment of ideal motherhood while humanizing Mary in wondering at whether her sorrow pushed her to wish for her own death. In this, King gives public voice to the private woes of women. She ends the poem asserting that John 19 is proof that Jesus also gave witness to female suffering, an idea that she might have clung to in both birthing and burying her children. King asserts that Jesus asked John to take care of His mother in John 19:26-27 because “His suffering eye this suffering being caught” (King 13). For King, these actions further qualified Jesus for worship not just because Jesus felt a duty to his mother, but rather because Jesus had a particular awareness of and compassion for female suffering. She even adds uncanonized dialogue to the interaction, depicting Jesus, again, as particularly affected by female feeling whispering “Take her” and “take her to thy home!” (King 13). King’s Jesus has not forgotten the women but instead has turned to them for strength to withstand His sacrifice and, in His own suffering, is moved to compassionately whisper a plea for their care. Interestingly, King takes liberties to not just add a bit of dialogue to this interaction, but also to change a single word of the quoted biblical text. In John 19, Jesus’s words to His mother are, “Woman, behold thy son!” (The Bible, John 19:26) but King changes it to read, “mother behold thy son!” (King 13). This seems a slight adjustment, but Lindal Buchanan argues in Rhetorics of Motherhood that the terms “mother” and “woman” can be viewed as opposite terms, noting, “Woman is the antithesis of Mother” (Buchanan 8). Lindal Buchanan (through Richard Weaver’s research on god and devil terms) calls the word mother “a god term” (Buchanan 7), meaning “an ultimate expression to which all others are subordinate” (Weaver 212). Buchanan argues that “The Mother . . . operates as a god term within public discourse and connotes a Hatch 32 myriad of positive associations, including children, love, protection, home, nourishment, altruism, morality, religion, self-sacrifice, strength, the reproductive body, the private sphere, and the nation” (Buchanan 8). King is tapping into all of these positive connotations and associations when she foregrounds Mary’s motherhood in defining her. In the background the words of the original verse, in which Jesus calls his mother “woman,” hover. Buchanan explains, “[Mother’s] corresponding devil term, Woman, invokes negative attributes, such as childlessness, selfcenteredness, work, materialism, hysteria, irrationality, the sensual/sexual body, and the public sphere” (Buchanan 8). While the corresponding associations with both terms are certainly different now than they were in the nineteenth century, King chooses to change that single word, and in doing so, shifts the focus toward Mary’s role rather than Mary’s personhood. In contrast, it is possible that King also uses the words in verse 27 to call for a greater acknowledgement of both Mary and the work of motherhood in general. Both John 19:27 and line 66 of King’s poem read, “Behold thy mother!” (King 13), which King uses as a triple entendre for different ideas of beholding—first, for John to adopt Mary as his own mother; second, for Latter-day Saints to give further acknowledgement and credit to Mary and biblical womanhood; and lastly, to truly see the mother as a real human being instead of just an idealized concept or god-term. Sandwiched within these reflections of the female experience and woman’s place in Christian faith, King seems to give her son a blessing within the lines of her poem. In lines 3349, immediately after reflecting on “all the power [God] dost give to [her]” (King 12), King asks God to bless her son with various attributes and life experiences. Her wording is reflective of baby blessings given by fathers to their children in a priesthood ordinance. Jonathan Stapley, in his book, The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology, explained, “The blessing of Hatch 33 children was part of the first formal liturgy Joseph Smith revealed to his nascent church” (Stapley 59), so King would have had many experiences witnessing fathers blessing their babies with certain talents and promises. The ordinance of fathers blessing their children was viewed as a duty of fatherhood and only increased in its association with properly enacting fatherly duties in the following decades. Stapley explains that while women were prohibited involvement in such blessings, “even those men not generally considered worthy and authorized to participate in priesthood functions could perform their fatherhood by participating in the blessings” (Stapley 78). Nevertheless, King steps into the masculine space of asking God to bless her child, saying, “give thine angels charge concerning him, / Preserve him ever from corrupting sin” (King 13) within the non-threatening feminine space of verse. While King pleas for blessings on the head of her child, she is sure to address God for those blessings rather than infer that she is speaking for God Himself, as a priesthood blessing would. It is unclear whether she takes this care in order to appear harmless and unthreatening to the patriarchal hierarchy of her faith or because she herself truly believes it is not her right to pronounce blessings on her children. Regardless of her motive, her expression of her desires for her children through prayer become public through the publication of her poetry, leading to greater public participation in her faith. Mary J. Tanner also explores her place as a woman in Latter-day Saint theology and culture, but unlike King, she directly asks questions about her role as both a poet and a Latterday Saint woman. Tanner titles her poem, “A Soliloquy,” immediately remarking on her position as playing a part in a role assigned to her. In this poem, she soliloquizes her true feelings and fears to her audience just as a character would in a play. Under the title, Tanner adds an epigraph from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. She quotes his famous soliloquy when Hamlet asks, “To be or not to be?” Tanner proceeds to write a parallel poem to that of Hamlet’s soliloquy, asking the question Hatch 34 that is consuming her own soul: “To write or not to write?—that is the question” (Tanner 125). While Hamlet is consumed with questions about the nature of death and whether his life is worth living, Tanner instead wonders to be a poet or not to be a poet. Both Hamlet and Tanner wrestle with insecurity and inaction. Tanner continues her parallel of Hamlet in her second line asking, “Whether its better to let my pen mark down / The thoughts that are my mind’s companions, / Even though they are not over brave or smart” (Tanner 125). Tanner gives voice to her audacity in writing, asking herself whether she has the right to write. She associates the claim to write with an exceptional ability that proves one worthy of the practice, worrying that she does not possess enough ability to justify herself. By companioning these questions with Hamlet, who wonders at the sinful nature of committing suicide, Tanner is simultaneously asking whether writing, for her as a woman, is sinful. While questioning whether she deserves to live the life of a poet, she also mourns the tedious nature of her life. She does not lean into idolized versions of motherhood or pedestaled descriptions of women’s roles. Instead, she says that without writing, she would: let the dull routine of daily cares Wear out my restless life, and naught be saved To mark that once I lived and breathed, And wore my life away in the great restless Moving tide of humanity; and sank— . . . with no name (Tanner 125) Tanner makes it clear that in poetry she finds a way to make a name for herself and establish her personhood. Without it, her life would be engulfed by the bland repetition of everyday life, indistinguishable from any other life. While Tanner is reflecting on whether writing poetry is congruent with the life of a Latter-day Saint woman, she is also worrying about whether she will Hatch 35 be remembered after she dies, knowing that she is not a person “whose lives have left on earth a monument” (Tanner 126). This wondering is in contrast to many popular folkloric depictions of 19th century Latter-day Saint women in modern Latter-day Saint culture in which women of pioneer stock are portrayed as unshakeable in their satisfaction in the private sphere and in knowing that their domestic work has eternal consequences. Tanner continues to be bolder than King and Crocheron in her questions, voicing doubts and worries that reveal her developing and living faith. She asks, “Have I a living soul, that leans to immortality?” (Tanner 125) and wonders whether she will go to heaven when she dies. She worries that an unnamed “they” in heaven might ask her “what I have done to give / My name a record with the nobler sons / Of earth, or worth to join their presence / In that glorious sphere?” (Tanner 126). Again, Tanner brings gender back into the equation, comparing her situation and her work as a woman to the “nobler sons” who, surely, have merited a place in heaven. While she may have chosen “sons” to create some consonance next to the lines containing “presence” and “sphere,” it is more likely that she is emphasizing her questions regarding her role as a female Saint and a female writer. The title of her collection, Fugitive Poems, reflects this wondering at the possible sinful nature of her poet life along with her place as an outsider, or fugitive, of the United States, but it also hint at her fears of living as a poet fugitive outside of heaven as well. While many poems in these three collections end with hope, Tanner resists that ending. Instead, after calling herself or her talents “a mere mite, an atom in the busy throng / That surges to and fro in the tide of human life” (Tanner 126), Tanner asks, presumably the previous unnamed “they” who seem to be in charge of entrance to heaven, “What was I? that should presume to carve / My name upon a rock, when I could only / Reach to mark my tablets in the sand?” (Tanner 126). There are many allusions and meanings at play here. First, Tanner is Hatch 36 positioning two images next to each other, foiling the idea of carving words into a rock with that of marking them in sand. Carving and marking are verbs that carry two different weights—one is meant to last and the other is not. Second, she alludes to the parable in Matthew 7 of the wise man who “built his house upon a rock” and the “foolish man which built his house upon the sand” (The Bible, Matthew 7:24-26). Her allusion, again, questions not only the lasting power of her work and writing but also its moral or sinful nature. In asking, “What was I?” (Tanner 126), it is clear that these questions are integral to Tanner’s understanding of her identity and her audacity as a female writer. Finally, her use of the word “rock” and “tablets” also carry a biblical connotation. Throughout the Old and New Testament Jesus Christ is referred to as the “stone which the builders refused” which then becomes “the head stone of the corner” (Psalm 118:22; see also Matthew 21:42, Mark 12:10, Luke 20:17, 1 Peter 2:7, Acts 4:11). Latter-day Saint scripture takes this comparison even further, combining both Christ’s parable in Matthew with references to Christ Himself as a stone, saying, “remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation” (The Book of Mormon, Helaman 5:12). While certainly Tanner is referring to her writing when she refers to carving her name on a rock, for her audience all of these meanings and associations with “rock” are significant. By focusing on her poetic life, Tanner wonders if she is just writing words into sand while neglecting the opportunity to build her life on the rock of Christ. Her use of the word “tablets” connotes a connection with Moses’s tablets in the Old Testament—tablets that he first smashes and that are eventually replaced by the greater law brought by Christ. Here she seems to confess her fears that she is living a lower law. While Latter-day Saint scripture teaches that Saints should “take upon [them] the name of Christ” (Doctrine and Covenants 18:21), Tanner Hatch 37 wonders at her own gall in the reverse of trying to “carve / My name upon a rock” (Tanner 126) when that rock was out of her reach. The irony of Tanner’s questions about whether her writing is worth existing is found in the maturity of the allusions and imagery she uses to describe the weakness of her writing. Her poem comes to a damning end, letting the answer of the nameless “they” hang in the air. It seems that the nameless “they” she refers to continues to refer back to those determining one’s worthiness to remain in heaven, but it could also imply Tanner’s hoped-for readership. When answering Tanner’s earlier question of, “What was I?” both audiences, she says, “will answer— Naught.” (Tanner 126). She ends her poem with a single word—nothing. Tanner’s em dash does a lot of heavy lifting. It is ostracizing the answer, emphasizing it in a way that force feeds it to her reader. It also works to clarify a possible double reading of this line. If, instead, Tanner wrote, “And they will answer naught,” (Tanner 126) the ending could be read as a refusal to answer the question. With the em dash, however, Tanner makes it clear that they do answer, and that their answer is that she is, in fact, nothing. While the poem is built around questions of whether she should write, these questions are presented in writing. While she worries she will be disqualified from heaven and be deemed as nothing, she publishes anyway, continually reaching for the rock and chisel. Unlike Mary J. Tanner, Augusta Joyce Crocheron’s poetry contains many declarations and few questions. She, too, writes about woman’s place and influence in her faith and society, but her approach works to comfort others and give them an elevated vision of their work as women. In her poem titled, “Woman,” Crocheron lays out multiple examples of women in scripture as evidence of the importance of their role in Latter-day Saint faith. Her boldest comparison, however, comes in comparing the work of motherhood to the work of Christ. She Hatch 38 writes, “The mother’s lot: like Christ to weep, / While loved ones, wearied sink to sleep;” (Crocheron 128). For Crocheron, being up all night with a fussy baby is salvific work that parallels the sacrifices of Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. Like the mothers in charge of feeding and caring for their infants through the night, Crocheron points out that Jesus, too, physically suffered alone while those who should have been His support slept on. While motherhood was a sanctioned realm of work for Latter-day Saint women, Crocheron elevates that work and assures her fellow female Saints that Jesus knows what it is like to “findeth them sleeping, and [say] . . . sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?” (The Bible, Mark 14:37). Crocheron’s argument reflects a later statement made by Matthew Cowley, one of the twelve apostles of the Church in 1954, when he said that mothers “belong to the great sorority of Saviorhood . . . [Mothers] are born with an inherent right, an inherent authority, to be the saviors of human souls” (Cowley 109). Crocheron was making such claims 73 years earlier, saying that both the work of motherhood and saviorhood becomes worth it “if by that cost, / A soul were saved that else were lost” (Crocheron 128). By legitimizing the work of motherhood, Crocheron makes space for women within the salvific work of the church. Crocheron takes her comparison one step further claiming that a lack of gratitude for woman’s work is akin to the mocking endured by Jesus at the cross. She writes, “Too often on her brow doth press / The cruel thorns of thanklessness” (Crocheron 129). Here, Crocheron alludes to the crown of thorns placed on Jesus’s head to mock His claim of kingship, asserting that forgetting or dismissing women’s contributions is also a sacrilegious mocking of their divine identity. This treatment of women and mothers leaves them “Betrayed, too, by a Judas’ kiss” (Crocheron 129). Crocheron’s motherly Christ figures reflect what Morrill says is “the central mission of [Latter-day Saint] women . . . to be earthly, female Christs and humbly and without Hatch 39 public notice dedicate their lives to relieving suffering” (Morrill 185). In giving this work a place within her poetry, Crocheron seems to be pushing back against the idea of living out this mission “without public notice” (Morrill 185). Crocheron continues to build her argument in defense of women through a series of examples of women being seen and trusted do great things in the Bible. She claims that any time you can find a story of Jesus in scripture or “Where’er is told His life divine, / There woman’s faith is intertwined” (Crocheron 129). She attempts to prove this statement, pointing to several scriptural examples of women discipling right alongside Jesus Himself. She argues that it was women, not men, who were: First to see the risen Lord, Thou wert not first to doubt His word; But first, the wondrous joy to share, And the glad word ordained to bear. (Crocheron 130) Crocheron’s use of the word ordained is interesting as it is most commonly associated with ordination to a priesthood office. Crocheron claims, however, that while not functioning within a priesthood office, women like Mary Magdalene were ordained to be the first Christian missionaries. Her rhetoric also shifts to begin writing in the second person, referring to her audience as “thou.” In this, Crocheron makes a clear connection between individual female readers and scriptural accounts of women, arguing that her female examples represent and refer to all womankind. After building her argument on examples of female biblical discipleship, Crocheron directly addresses her reader. She declares: Thou art not least and last of all Hatch 40 In heaven’s might plan; Thou too hast place of high degree Beside the soul of man. Thou wilt not there be counted weak. (Crocheron 131) In a stanza appropriately placed in the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Crocheron declares her belief in the equality of women. She also infers that any perspective of women that counts them as the weaker or second sex is a viewpoint that will not endure into the afterlife. She argues that what others use to define women as weak—that is, their greater capacity to love—is what will, in fact, qualify them for heaven. She claims that, in the afterlife, womankind will wear their greater capacity for love “as a diadem, / Not as a master’s chain” (Crocheron 132). The imagery here is striking. After a poem filled with hopeful declarations of woman’s place and capacity within her faith and society, Crocheron acknowledges that the power, status, and freedom of women to which she refers is not their current reality. While holding tight to what she claims are the eternal truths of womanhood, she confesses that this is not the position that they currently hold, and as Morrill explains, is “quietly, persuasively, and . . . nonconfrontationally advocating for [women’s] importance within the church, home, and the plan of salvation” (Morrill 188). Hannah Tapfield King, Augusta Joyce Crocheron, and Mary J. Tanner all had the privilege of representing their state and their faith on a national and international scale through the inclusion of their poetry collections in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Emmeline B. Wells’s words at that fair in discussing these collections continue to hold true today. She declared, “I have only told you of a few things that have been done by Western women in journalism and authorship. I could tell you much more had I time, but it remains for the future to reveal the Hatch 41 magnificent possibilities of song and story” (Wells 178). Within these collections published between 1879 and 1881, all three women used elaborate literary and biblical allusions as well as a complex understanding of their faith, gender, and nation to provide rich insight into late nineteenth-century female Latter-day Saint understandings of feminism, theology, and nationalism. Hatch 42 Works Cited The Bible. Authorized King James Version, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1979. The Book of Mormon. Trans. Joseph Smith, Jr. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981. Buchanan, Lindal. Rhetorics of Motherhood. Southern Illinois University Press, 2013. Butterworth, Robert D. “Thomas Hood, Early Victorian Christian Social Criticism, and the Hoodian Hero.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 39, no. 2, 2011, pp. 427–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41307875. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023. Cowley, Matthew. Matthew Cowley Speaks. Deseret Book Company, 1954. Crocheron, Augusta Joyce. Wild Flowers of Deseret: A Collection of Efforts in Verse. Salt Lake City, 1881. The Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981. Section 138. Givens, Terryl L. People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture. Oxford University Press, 2007. Hood, Thomas. “The Bridge of Sighs.” The Favourite Poems of Thomas Hood. James R. Osgood and Company, 1877. King, Hannah Tapfield. An Epic Poem, a Synopsis of the Rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: From the Birth of the Prophet Joseph Smith to the Arrival on the Spot Which the Prophet Brigham Young Pronounced to Be the Site of the Future Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City, 1884. ---. Songs of the Heart. Salt Lake City, 1879. Hatch 43 “Lamanite Identity.” Gospel Topics, www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/lamaniteidentity?lang=eng. Accessed 4 Oct. 2023 Morrill, Susanna. “Women’s Popular Literature as Theological Discourse: A Mormon Case Study, 1880-1920.” The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past, edited by Catherine A. Brekus, The University of North Carolina Press, 2007, pp. 184231. Neilson, Reid L. Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-Day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Oxford University Press, 2011. Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason. Watchmaker Publishing, 2010. The Pearl of Great Price of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981. Reed, Leonard. “‘As a Bird Sings’: Hannah Tapfield King, Poetess and Pioneer.” BYU Studies Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 3, 2012, pp. 101–18. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43039895. Accessed 1 Oct. 2023. Reeder, Jennifer. “To Do Something Extraordinary”: Mormon Women and the Creation of a Usable Past. 2013. George Mason University, PhD Dissertation. Reeve, Paul W. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. Oxford University Press, 2015. Stapley, Jonathan. The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology. Oxford University Press, 2017. “Style Guide—The Name of the Church.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2018, newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/style-guide. Accessed 15 Oct. 2023. Tanner, Mary J. Fugitive Poems. Salt Lake City, 1880. Hatch 44 Tullidge, Edward W. The Women of Mormondom. Tullidge and Crandall, 1877. Weaver, Richard M. The Ethics of Rhetoric. Echo Point Books & Media, 2018. Wells, Emmeline B. “Emeline B. Wells on Women Authors and Journalists.” Woman’s Exponent, vol. 21, no. 24, 15 June 1893, pp. 178. Woodruff, Wilford. “Historical Incidents, Etc” General Conference Report of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Apr. 1898, pp. 89-90. Woodruff, Wilford. “Not Ashamed of the Gospel, Etc.” Journal of Discourses, vol. 19, no. 35, 16 Sept. 1877, pp. 223-230. Hatch 45 Appendix of Poems Considered: “Isabella” by Hannah Tapfield King Oh, Woman! Genius, power, kingdoms, Thrones--with all their charm and prestige— Sceptres, subjects , ministering spirits, round, Hover round thy footsteps, to watch thine eye To catch thy lightest word, and that obey, To stand in highest altitude, erect and firm, And ne'er turn dizzy with the regal hight; Who still is WOMAN--still her nature holds Pure, unsullied, as a queen should be; Who has an ear for truth, for genius, In whatever form it come, though stript Of worldly grandeur--all the world calls great; And standing, like the far-fame obelisks Of far-famed Egypt, alone, unread, With nought to herald it but that intense, That persevering genius God bestows On those He singles out to do His work— His work on earth, where man His agent is , And woman too , his partner and co-mate In all the grand, essential moves upon The mighty chess-board of the game of life. Hatch 46 Such was Isabella, sovereign of Castile And queen of Ferdinand and Spain. To Ferdinand--himself a king-she brought Her throne, her kingdom, subjects, and herself And laid them at the feet of him to whom More, more than all, she gave her loving heart, A gem of which a monarch might be proud; And he--most rarely found--proved worthy Of all the wealth she showered on his head. They lived, and loved , and reigned conjointly, Hand and heart united in their regal work, When lo ! a man in humble guise presents Himself and with them craves an audience. He is admitted, In person, regal As the pair to whom he is presented ; She has an eye at once to read the man: A heart to feel he bears upon his form The duplicate of HIM who gave the mission, And sustained throughout, in every need, the man. Ferdinand gives attention-Isabella, Enthusiasm . She felt the man of God A messenger direct, and hence prepared To learn his mission and obey his voice. Hatch 47 Columbus spoke! and then at once a queen Stood forth as the apostle of his cause; A queen, a woman, a proselyte of truth A truth that did enrich his day and age, Was first received by woman's gentle heart. Isabella was that woman; and she Never wavered, but until death was true. Before her court's indifference, before His enemies, or his reverses , she Believed him true, and was, upon the throne, His proselyte, and to the grave, his friend. Ferdinand, in this, was worldly-minded; Isabella saw, with spirit eyes, he Was a man of destiny! a man of God! And told the men appointed to investigate The claims Columbus advocated, That they were haggling with God the price of Empire, and of souls, whom to idolatry Their infidelity would leave . The king Had not the faith that he could meet expense So mighty as a naval outfit for Hatch 48 The man who, in returning, promised An empire that should astound the world And ages yet unborn. Isabella listened to the colloquy; then with a Burst of heavenly enthusiasm, cried; "I will undertake the enterprise alone For my crown of Castile: I will pawn My diamonds and my jewels --in my eyes Most worthless, compared with what is offered By this great, good man, whom God hath sent to us.' This noble burst of woman's feeling triumphed. The king, chagrined, consented to inspect His treasury and see what could be done. "Disinterestedness is the true wisdom Of great politicians." Columbus Was re- called. He bowed at the feet of her Who'd nobly won for him the victory. His soul was full of sweet emotions, And she wept tears upon his noble head. Ferdinand was moved, and ratified the deed, And into unknown seas the explorer passed. Hatch 49 “Lines: On the Restoration of Health to my Beloved Boy After a Severe Sickness Crossing the Plains in 1853” by Hannah Tapfield King My prayers are heard! my tears were not in vain! My loved Tom Owen is restored again! Again I see health fan his pallid cheek, And laughter lurking in his eye so meek! Again his speech, which fever took away, Returns in strength to answer what I say; No longer fever dries the vital flood, But health's pure spirit animates his blood. Once more bright reason doth her throne ascend, And sad delirious usurpations end. O, mighty Father! ever good and kind; How great thy gift ! the God- like gift of mind ! How fine soe're the form which Thou hast given, Or features - moulded in the cast of heaven! If reason fails to light the vase within , We shrink away-as we would shrink from sin . How sad the tortures my poor heart has known While this great sickness claimed him for its own! How many prayers my heart has offered up To ask Thine hand to pass this bitter cup ; Hatch 50 And Thou hast deigned this heartfelt prayer to hear, And grant me what my spirit holds so dearRestored me back my sole surviving son. Four Thou did'st call, and left me but this one— I do not now complain, for all is well; 'T was wisely done, the coming time will tell; They're safe with Thee, and time will yet reveal With whom, to whom, on whom to set Thy seal. Amen! My grateful heart now rises up To bless and praise Thee for life's healthful cup. The life now spared I dedicate to Thee, With all the power thou dost give to me. Lord, give thine angels charge concerning him, Preserve him ever from corrupting sin. Preserve him pure , as I would have him be, And may his walk be ever close to Thee. Give him that wisdom which is from above, And shield him ever with Thine arm of love. In Thy blest priesthood may he firmly stand, Obeying all that priesthood doth demand; Whate'er temptations he may have to meet, Help him to tread them all beneath his feet, And set his foot upon the neck of sin , Hatch 51 Where'er it meet him, from without or in. Father, I want to see him wholly Thine, His human nature curbed by the divine; Oh, wilt Thou not bow down Thy gracious ear To this, my simple, but most heartfelt prayer? To this, the dedication of my son To Thee for all eternities to come? Yes; Thou wilt hear, for I prefer the same In that most honored, most prevailing name; The name of One who died to save mankind, And leave a pattern for the same, behind; Who, in that dark and agonizing hour When death held o'er him high and mighty power, Remember'd her, of whom He was a part, Who lay so closely at His God- like heart ; Who, at His feet, o'erwhelm'd with stunning woe, Sat mutely watching every deathly throe ; Her soul absorbed in agonizing love, Perhaps was dreaming she would pass above. His suffering eye this suffering being caught--He calls to one who knows His inmost thought; "Take her, " he whispers, " take her to thy home! Behold thy mother! mother behold thy son!" Hatch 52 In this beloved, endearing, holy name, My prayer I waft to thy eternal Fane. The name of JESUS fills the Emperyan dome: Through it my prayer shall reach my Father's throne. “The Prophets” by Mary J. Tanner "Alas ! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun! Oh it was pitiful ! Near a whole city full, Friends they had none.” Far from their friends and rights, Through the long silent nights. Through the deep gloom; Led to a prison cell, Hearts that beat warm and well Went to their doom. Slain for the faith they bore, Hatch 53 Crimson the robes they wore, Dripping with prophets' gore Foul hands were red. Free born Americans, True loyal citizens Suffered and bled. Sound the tale long and loud, Tell to the merry crowd, Tell to the rich and proud, Tell to the poor; Tell that a martyr's blood, Lies at their door, Here in America, Glorious America, Land of the free, Slain in the prime of life, Slain without war or strife Brothers could be. “Fatherly, motherly, Sisterly, brotherly," Hearts ached and bled: Hatch 54 Over the friends they loved, Slain by a cruel mob. Silent and dead. "Truth by false evidence Thrown from its eminence, Even God's providence Seeming estranged." Oh ! what a mockery Sounds the philosophy, Freemen have changed. “Where the lamps quiver So far in the river, With many a light. From window and casement, From garret to basement," In grief and amazement They gazed on the sight. Let the world's history Record the mystery ; Darkened by crime, Hatch 55 The stain on its pages. Will linger for ages. Untarnished by time. Shame on the cravens Who mock with their breath. The widows, and orphans, The silence of death: — The hand that could wield Such irreverent pen, The murder would shield, And darken the field. With their life blood again. The plains of Missouri Are reeking and red, With the blood of the martyrs For liberty shed. The cries of the orphans, The widows' wild wail, The moans of the famished Are borne on the gale. Hatch 56 The martyrs of Carthage, The wrongs of Nauvoo, Bear a record to history Faithful and true. The lone graves that mark Where the weary ones rest, As toil worn they sought For a home in the west! While their prophet and leader Trod firmly the van, And strengthened their hearts As a god-fearing man. He led through the wilderness Hopeful and brave, The band of true hearted, From home and friends parted, Their honor to save. And planted their banner In triumph to stand, O'er the home of the free In a lone desert land. Hatch 57 His foes gathered round him, And sought to confound him With prison and chain !— They fain would dissemble, And make the world tremble, And the fair cheek grow pale, As they told the wild tale Of Missouri again. The God that could strengthen Our hearts on the way, Had power to lengthen And guard o'er his days. In peaceful repose He has gone to his rest, From the hands of his foes, From the trials and woes. And the wrongs they disclose, He has gone to his home In the land of the blest. With words of derision, With mocking and scorn, Hatch 58 With falsehood's perversion The ignorant clamor Their base blatant slander, As over the mountains Their voices are borne. But lo ! to their hearts Comes a voice on the gale— And terror imparts, As it echoes the tale; Crying, shame to the nation ! And shame to the cause; That would murder her freemen, Dishonor her laws. From the plains of Missouri, All reeking and red. From the blood of the martyrs In Carthage jail shed. Comes a cry that decends On the annals of time, And stains the fair flag Of our country with crime. Hatch 59 “A Soliloquy” by Mary J. Tanner “To be or not to be?” – Hamlet To write or not to write? —that is the question; Whether its better to let my pen mark down The thoughts that are my mind's companions, Even though they are not over brave or smart; Or let the dull routine of daily cares Wear out my restless life, and naught be saved To mark that once I lived and breathed, And wore my life away in the great restless Moving tide of humanity; and sank— As sink the waves of ocean, with no name, Or trace, to tell, which of them I might have been. Have I a living soul, that leans to immortality? And shall I go, when life is o'er, to join The bright spirits that have lived and loved. And passed away? Whose lives ha;ve left on earth a monument That shall stand when ages have gone by, While generations have lived and died; Hatch 60 Empires and States have raised and flourished, And crumbled into dust, While eternities' march marks the time As it creeps slowly by; and centuries Take up the round and their names are buried In the dust and ashes of the long ago. And will they ask what I have done to give My name a record with the nobler sons Of earth, or worth'to join their presence In that glorious sphere? And shall I bow in modest bashfulness, With meek hands folded on my breast and say, I have done naught, deserving the honor Of such August Presence? If God gave me talents I know not. Some little scribbling have I done, Some little work and worriment and care. To find among the surface of the soil Some gold or gems that might be scattered Loosely around; waiting for careless hands To gather up: but of the wealth that requires Labor, and delving in earth's dark caves to find, But little have I got. Of God's great truths Hatch 61 And oracles divine, which take deep study And profound thoughts to frame and fathom. And set forth to mankind to benefit And raise them from their plodding course. These have I none. A mere mite, an atom in the busy throng That surges to and fro in the tide of human life. What was I? that should presume to carve My name upon a rock, when I could only Reach to mark my tablets in the sand? And they will answer—Naught. “Wild Flowers of Deseret” by Augusta Joyce Crocheron Guarding the hidden desert land, The Rocky Mountains nobly stand, Unchangeable and grand, to-day, As when the Pioneers found way Adown the canyon’s pathway rude, Into the valley’s solitude. Dusty and gray, and parched and dry, Hatch 62 Beneath the heat of that July, Only the sage’s ashen green, And cactus here and there between, And tiny cups of segoes blue, Greeted the weary traveler’s view. Where now a hundred streamlets run, With emerald borders, then were none. Adown the canyon’s rocky bed The crystal waters foaming sped, Pouring into the Jordan’s tide, The boon—to thirsty earth denied. Now, through a city’s streets it flows: “The desert blossoms as the rose,” And garden homes reach far and wide— The tourist’s wonder and our pride; And groups of happy children play Where first we traced our lonely way. No ancient ruin, grand and gray, To mark a nation passed away; But a new Kingdom’s life begun, On freedom’s soil ‘neath a warm sun Hatch 63 And smiling sky, that yet will be The fairest home of liberty. The world may wonder and may wait To watch its growth, its fruit, its fate. Sown in the sand, watered by tears, Sheltered by prayers, guarded by fears, The world has watched its leaves unfold, And now its bud and bloom behold. “Woman” by Augusta Joyce Crocheron The mother’s lot: like Christ to weep, While loved ones, wearied, sink to sleep; The mother’s lot, like Him to bear The burden of their wrongs, and wear A name assailed, if by that cost, A soul were saved that else were lost. He died, that souls of men might live; She, life-long sacrifice doth give. Too often on her brow doth press Hatch 64 The cruel thorns of thanklessness; And oft her life its peace hath missed, Betrayed, too, by a Judas’ kiss. Forget not in thy misery, The heritage He gave to thee, To bear, like Him, earth’s griefs, and win A triumph o’er the world within Thy narrow sphere; and then to share Reward that greatest love doth bear. Never recorded to His name— Stern judgement on thee, weak ad shamed; His charity and wisdom turned The accuser’s blow, and hearts that burned To wreak their hate and cruelty, In shame and silence, turned from thee. And she who came with perfumes sweet, And, weeping, washed the Savior’s feet, Though sinful, mercy found, and heard From lips divine, the blest reward— “Thy sins are all forgiven thee, And this shall thy memorial be.” Hatch 65 For thee, what miracles He wrought! They dead to life again He brought; The widow’s mite He blessed, and she Lives in His sacred history. Where’er is told His life divine, There woman’s faith is intertwined. Never recorded to thy name— The dead or word, that tongue might claim, In proof that woman’s soul denied Belief in Him. Though crucified, Though cold, inanimate, He lay, In faith and love no fear could stay (Mightiest love that ever moved Hearts in mortality, and proved Their faith and constancy to Him), They came while morning yet was dim In the far east, and weeping brought Their sacred gifts, and found Him not! To them who waited through the night In desolation, for the light, Nor even yet their Lord could yield From their existence, He revealed Hatch 66 Fulfillment of His prophecy— To rise in immortality! They, who undoubting faith had kept, O’erjoyed, enraptured, kneeling wept, With inspiration’s eyes to see The resurrection’s mystery! The first to see the risen Lord, Thou wert not first to doubt His word; But first, the wondrous joy to share, And the glad word ordained to bear. Though thou hast lost that light of love Which made thy path so bright before, Or though its glow hath died away, To shine again for thee no more, Despair not thou, nor silent turn, In wounded pride, to steel thy heart Against the faithless, when anew Thy tender thoughts relenting start. Too oft demanded in love’s name, Such test of thy soul’s strength we see, As greater minds would scorn to bear, Hatch 67 And justice ne’er would claim of thee; ‘Till wearied, tired, and sore at heart, Thy nature riseth swift to turn ‘Gainst all the record of thy hopes, And all their promises to spurn. Despair not thou, though ‘gainst thy soul The wrongs of earth seem to prevail; Though thou hast yielded all and bowed, Weeping above life’s phantoms pale, Thy heritage to love, and give Thy life’s best deeds unto thy kind; Though that reward, which thou hast earned, Thou ne’er within this life shalt find. Still to thy standard be thou true, And passing time to thee shall bring Perfected fruit of all thine aims; And griefs that bowed thee shall take wing. The ideal within thy soul Is not a fiction of thine own; Hereafter thou wilt see in full, That which was here but dimly shown. Hatch 68 Thou art not least and last of all In heaven’s mighty plan; Thou too hast place of high degree Beside the soul of man. Thou wilt not there be counted weak, Though led by love thou art; In that high court where all is love, Such thought will bear no part. There wilt thou in thy soul redeemed The jewel, love, retain; And wear it as a diadem, Not as a master’s chain. Unto this blest and grand estate, The gospel lights the way; Trust thou its guidance, let no doubts Thine onward footsteps stay. O, be thou like the blessed five— Thy robes and lamp prepare, At marriage supper of the Lamb, A name and place to share.