Pioneer Woman (1947)

by Alice Morrey Bailey

They say she wept when she first saw the land

That swept unbroken into the salten sea,

The unfenced sage, the single cedar tree-

The shimmering heat strained taut the last frail strand

Of her endurance. Wagon-choking sand

Seemed bitter lot- too hard the stern decree

Of wilderness- to close in memory

The empty homes of this long driven band.

Yet pulse with His, she caught each growing surge

Of hope, and stretched her courage famine-thin

To bear new life, to span the cricket scourge.

She bent her strength to nourish, teach, and spin,

And made her faith in God a moving stream

To gird the spires and temples of man’s dreams.  

(The original source of this poem is in the Relief Society Magazine, July 1947)