Charis Southwell is one of those Mormon poetesses who has been forgotten by time. She won several prizes at BYU for her poetry. She died quite young of Lupus. A while back, I stumbled onto a website her brother William made on which he put many of her poems.

Her poems, a number of which deal with her faith, use fresh imagery and eschew cliché without seeming so in love with words that they forget to be accessible.

For the purpose of this blog, I am linking to her more devotional poems, but I hope you will also consider the others listed here.

Here’s to give you a taste:

A position on sin

Life cannot hold back pain,
But we might, if we wished
That moment before the flame,
Like the moth, before its wings expire
Consumed by surrender to desire.
But a promise I can't dream to name
Waits for restraint. I seek light higher
And trade the gold-warm candle flame
For an eternal sea of glass and fire

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His guilt injured mind

Advent

We are afraid. We are afraid

The power of God touches the reaches of space

Exercise in believing

The Conference

The Restoration

The gilded wheel spinning in the sun spiral
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