I love Emma.
Emma Smith that is.
I believe Joseph had a woman of great grit and faith in Christ as the first chosen companion of his heart.
It was my good fortune to come across a lovely twenty-one-page soft bound book called An Evening With Emma by Marsha Newman. The book (more like a thick pamphlet) is a collection of poems from five individuals: Emma’s mother, Emma’s mother-in-law, one of Emma’s friends, Emma’s granddaughter who shared her first name, and Emma herself.
I was so heart touched as I read these poems. Each poem seemed so honest and revealed such telling things about Emma.
Here at Untoalltheworld I share each of these five poems. I begin with Elizabeth Hale’s, Emma’s mother, poem.
Emma was my seventh child.
She was almost perfect in her ways.
We tried not to praise her above the others,
but Isaac would often say,
‘Emma is my Pearl of Great Price.’
Giving her up to Joseph Smith
was a terrible sacrifice.
When Emma was a child
she was, even then, serious-minded
and faithful to her religion.
We are Methodists and Emma
could lead the singing for
her Uncle Nathaniel’s congregation.
Once when she was only seven,
her father heard her conversation
with the Lord in a grove of trees.
In her sweet, clear voice
she asked God if He wouldn’t please
help her father to be saved.
That prayer was the thing that paved
the way for Isaac to return to the fold,
renewed in the spirit,
dedicated to doing good
and living like he should.
My Emma was a beauty, a long-stemmed rose.
She had plenty of suitors, goodness knows,
but no one pleased her.
Maybe she was too educated for her good.
Isaac saw that she had education
When most girls didn’t go to school.
Because of her high intellect,
she never allowed herself to be a fool
for romance or a lover’s song –
that is until the Smith boy came along.
A ‘plowboy from palmyra’ –
that’s what Isaac called him,
right or wrong.
I know it caused Emma much distress
to leave her family that loved her so,
to just pick up one winter’s day and go
away with this strange young man,
all the way to live in a different state.
Land alive, she had more heartache
heaped upon her plate
than any woman I’ve ever seen.
They finally came back to us
and lived for a spell in our son’s home,
until the feelings round here
became as mean as they were in Palmyra,
and they were forced to move again
so Joseph could finish that Bible
from some mysterious plates of gold.
Well, we were never allowed to hold
those plates, and neither was Emma,
though she was his scribe for a good part of it.
Then, when Emma was almost worn out,
A man called Oliver came about –
A fine man, educated, flowery in his ways,
And took over the writing.
A good thing too, if you ask me.
A woman has more to do with her days
than to sit at a writing table.
It’s a good thing Emma was fit and able.
She was the one to plant the garden,
tend the animals, cook the food,
and lay in winter supplies.
Her husband was too busy with that book
to care for his family proper,
and it wasn’t any surprise
when one day they up and moved.
The heartache has never been soothed
even after all these years,
of parting with our daughter in anger and tears.
Emma buried her first child here.
I sometimes walk down by the grave,
and think of her, a young wife who gave
everything, everything she had
for the sake of a man and his dreams,
and it makes me sad
to think of my sweet girl
and what might have been if she’d stayed here,
her family all around.
It seems to me there’s enough to fear
just in living a common life,
but to be chased from pillar to post –
no place to lay your head,
no home for your babes,
living like a wild thing…
Well, it was obvious that Emma loved most
that plowboy, that young man
some called a prophet,
and she sacrificed her happy, peaceful life
to be his elect lady,
a Prophet’s wife.
Unto all the world: I love Emma Smith!
