Helaman 11:4–17
Out of love’s abundance came the famine
Sent to save them from their own hands
Clenched like stone around their hearts.
Blossoms on the fruit trees curled and withered
Drifting through the air toward the dust,
Where seeds of all variety
Lay parched and tightening like fists.
Whole fields of wilted grain,
The pale stalks kneeling in the unrelenting sun,
Burned whiter,
Their shriveling kernels hardening in the husk.
Dwindling flocks and herds, half starved and wild with dryness
Reeled and fretted in a frenzy maddening as the sun.
And children, thin as the shadows of noon,
Lay wrapped in whimpering and fear.
Still, the people waited until thousands
Drifted stubbornly beyond the edge of death
Before they sacrificed their grasp
And let their proud hearts break.
