diff --git a/sphinx/setup_command.py b/sphinx/setup_command.py
index 2ef152d6d..86e84196f 100644
--- a/sphinx/setup_command.py
+++ b/sphinx/setup_command.py
@@ -81,6 +81,7 @@ class BuildDoc(Command):
             else:
                 app.builder.build_update()
         except Exception, err:
+            from docutils.utils import SystemMessage
             if isinstance(err, SystemMessage):
                 sys.stderr, darkred('reST markup error:')
                 print >>sys.stderr, err.args[0].encode('ascii', 'backslashreplace')