Edwin Markham

“ Comes to push back the shadow of the night,
The gray Tradition full of flint and flaw—
Comes to wipe out the insults to the soul,
The insults of the Few against the Whole,
The insults they make righteous with a law.
Yea, He will bear the Safety of the State,
For in his still and rhythmic steps will be
The power and music of Alcyone,
Who holds the swift heavens in their starry fate.
Yea, He will lay on souls the power of peace,
And send on kingdoms torn the sense of Home—
More than the fire of Joy that burned on Greece,
More than the light of Law that rose on Rome. ”

“ Peers into the face of Privilege and cries,
“Why are you halting in the path of man?
Is it your shoulder bears the human load?
Do you draw down the rains of the sweet heaven,
And keep the green things growing? Back to hell!”
God is descending from eternity,
And all things, good and evil, build the road.
Yea, down in the thick of things, the men of greed
Are thumping the inhospitable clay.
By wondrous toils the men without the Dream,
Led onward by a something unawares,
Are laying the foundations of the Dream,
The Kingdom of Fraternity foretold. ”

“ With a feeling of life's oneness and its worth,
A feeling of its mystery and awe.
And when He comes into the world gone wrong,
He will rebuild her beauty with a song.
To every heart He will its own dream be:
One moon has many phantoms in the sea.
Out of the North the norns will cry to men:
"Balder the Beautiful has come again!"
The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead:
"Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head!" ”

“ Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this—
More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed—
More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
More fraught with menace to the universe. ”

“ Only the heart-quick praise, the praise of deed,
Is faithful praise for the heroic breed.
How shall we honor them, our Deathless Dead?
How keep their mighty memories alive?
In him who feels their passion, they survive!
Flatter their souls with deed, and all is said!
In the heroic soul their souls create
Is raised remembrance past the reach of fate.
The will to serve and bear,
The will to love and dare,
And take for God unprofitable risk—
These things, these things will utter praise and pæan
Louder than lyric thunders Æschylean;
These things will build our dead unwasting obelisk. ”

“ Shine through the frame of nations for a light,
Move through the hearts of heroes in a song:
It is Thy beauty, wilder than the night,
That hushed the heavens and keeps the high gods strong.
I know, Supernal Woman, Thou dost seek
No song of man, no worship and no praise;
But thou wouldst have dead lips begin to speak,
And dead feet rise to walk immortal ways.
Yet listen, Mighty Mother, to the child
Who has no voice but song to tell his grief—
Nothing but tears and broken numbers wild,
Nothing but woodland music for relief.{124} ”

“ The stars to look our way and honor us.
The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;
The tang and odor of the primal things—
The rectitude and patience of the rocks;
The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;
The courage of the bird that dares the sea;
The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;
The pity of the snow that hides all scars;
2The loving-kindness of the wayside well;
The tolerance and equity of light
That gives as freely to the shrinking weed
As to the great oak flaring to the wind—
To the grave’s low hill as to the Matterhorn
That shoulders out the sky. ”

“ And trees, they have no private ends,
But stand together as close friends.
They send their beauty on all things,
An equal gift to clowns and kings.
50They worry not: there is enough
Laid by for them of God’s good stuff—
Enough for all, and so no fear
Sends boding on their blameless cheer.
So from the field comes curious news—
That each one takes what it can use—
Takes what its lifted arms can hold
Of sky-sweet rain and beamy gold;
And all give back with pleasure high
Their riches to the sun and sky. ”

“ They fill the night with ineffectual cries.
There is for them not anything before,
But sound of sea and sight of soundless shore,
Save when the darkness glimmers with a ray,
And Hope sings softly, Soon it will be day.
Then for a golden space the shades are thinned,
And dawn seems blowing seaward on the wind.{115}
But soon the dark comes wilder than before,
And swift around them breaks a sullen roar;
The tempest calls to windward and to lea,
And—they are seabirds on the homeless sea.
{116} A Harvest Song
The gray bulk of the granaries uploom against the sky ”

“ Or hold their bleak hands over embers that die out and darken.
The anarchies gather and thunder: few, few are the fraters,
And loud is the revel at night in the camp of the traitors.{113}
Say, Shelley, where are you—where are you? our hearts are a-breaking!
The fight in the terrible darkness—the shame—the forsaking!
The leaves shower down and are sport for the winds that come after;
And so are the Toilers in all lands the jest and the laughter
Of nobles—the Toilers scourged on in the furrow as cattle,
Or flung as a meat to the cannons that hunger in battle. ”

“ A bringer of the tidings of the stars,
News of the forces and the frame of things.
Be to the poet, leagued with Death and Eld,
A Memnon whisper of the Mystery,
Life’s lofty joy and immemorial grief.
Be to the calm historian a glass
Where, through the rush of phantoms, he can see
The majesty and quietness of Truth,
The craft of God, the lure and threat of Time.
86Hail, Titan, with the hair upon your breast!
Be terrible in battle to throw down
The stronghold of the traitors and their crew.
Flash down the sky-born lightnings of the Pen;
Let loose the cramped-up thunders of the Types. ”

“ The weight of the whole world is light as a feather,
And the peaks rise in silence and westerly flee:
Oh, the world and the poet are singing together,
And from the far cliff comes a sound of the sea.
{70} My Comrade
I never build a song by night or day,
Of breaking ocean or of blowing whin,
But in some wondrous unexpected way,
Like light upon a road, my Love comes in.
And when I go at night upon the hill,
My heart is lifted on mysterious wings:
My Love is there to strengthen and to still,
For she can take away the dread of things.
{71} A Lyric of the Dawn ”

“ Of bended barley in the quiet breeze;
As faithful as the never-failing Earth
That gives us bread of rest and bread of mirth;
As patient as the rocks that have been still
Since put into their places on the hill;
In league with Earth and all her quiet things,
Whose lives are wrapped in shade and whisperings;
In league with Earth and all the things that live
To give their toil for others and forgive.
Pausing to let the hush of evening pass
Across the soul, as shadow over grass,
They cease their day-long sacrament of toil,
That living prayer, the tilling of the soil! ”

“ Teach me, Father, how to go
Softly as the grasses grow;
Hush my soul to meet the shock
Of the wild world as a rock;
But my spirit, propt with power,
Make as simple as a flower.
Let the dry heart fill its cup,
Like a poppy looking up;
Let life lightly wear her crown,
Like a poppy looking down,
When its heart is filled with dew,
And its life begins anew. ”

“ Haste, O people: all are bidden—
Haste from places, high or hidden:
In Mary’s Child the Kingdom comes, the heaven in beauty bends!
He has made all life completer:
He has made the Plain Way sweeter,
For the stall is His first shelter and the cattle His first friends.
95He has come! the skies are telling:
He has quit the glorious dwelling;
And first the tidings came to us, the humble shepherd folk. ”

“ Without are hungry harvesters, within enchanted stores.
Lo, they had bread while they were out a-toiling in the sun:
Now they are strolling beggars, for the harvest work is done.
They are the gods of husbandry: they gather in the sheaves,
But when the autumn strips the wood, they’re drifting with the leaves.{117}
They plow and sow and gather in the glory of the corn;
They know the noon, they know the pitiless rains before the morn;
They know the sweep of furrowed fields that darken in the gloom—
A little while their hope on earth, then evermore the tomb. ”

“ Elizabeth of Hungary
I think of that friend of the people that lady of long ago,
That high-born dame of Hungary who felt the common woe—
Who loved the work-worn multitude whose pillow is a stone,
And felt beat in upon her heart their sorrow as her own.
She bent to lift, for in her blood ran some heroic strain
Of simple serving majesty strayed down from Charlemagne.
Queen of a hundred legends, star of a misty past,
While cities rise and cities fade, her memory will last. ”

“ There comes a pitiless cry from the oppressed—
A cry from the toilers of Babylon for their rest.—
O Poet, thou art holden with a vow:
The light of higher worlds is on thy brow,
And Freedom's star is soaring in thy breast.
Go, be a dauntless voice, a bugle-cry
In darkening battle when the winds are high—
A clear sane cry wherein the God is heard
To speak to men the one redeeming word. ”

“ On through the dawn-bright peaks our bodies swung
And flower-soft lyrics by immortals sung
⁠Fell from their unseen pinnacles in air:
⁠God looked from Heaven that hour, for you were fair,
And I a poet, and the star was young. ”

“ With untried tendons, cramped in all her length,
Chafing in snowy lair, dreams of the hour
When she shall loose on Earth her hairy strength.
And Germany, whose blonde intrepid might
Once sent her Saxon fire on every land,
Hears the great Labor Angel down the night,
Crying, “Behold, my judgments are at hand!”
And elder kingdoms by the Midland Sea,
Whose every crag has burned with battle fire,
52Feel the young pulses of the days to be,
And hear far voices call them to aspire. ”

“ Tell me of things afar
In valleys silent under moon and star:{76}
Dim hollows hushed with night,
The lofty cedars misty in the light,
Wild clusters of the vine,
Wild odors of the pine,
The eagle’s eyrie lifted to the moon—
High places where on quiet afternoon
A shadow swiftens by, a thrilling scream
Startles the cliff, and dies across the woodland to a dream. ”

“ Whether in deed or in dream I go;
Whether I was in that other sky
Only a dream-moth straying by;
Or whether that world was the world of truth
And this one only a dream forsooth;
Whether perchance for a little span
A moth is not dreaming itself a man!
36 Our Deathless Dead
How shall we honor them, our Deathless Dead? ”

“ It breaks as a hush on the soul in the wonder of youth;
And the lyrical dream of the boy is the kingly truth.
The world is a vapor, and only the Vision is real—
Yea, nothing can hold against Hell but the Wingèd Ideal. ”

“ Oft when the white, still dawn
Lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart,
I've felt it like a glory in my heart
(The world's mysterious stir) —
But had no throat like yours, my bird,
Nor such a listener. ”

“ From a cliff overhead.
{84} A Cry in the Night
Wail, wail, wail,
For the fleering world goes down:
Into the song of the poet pale
Mixes the laugh of the clown.
Grim, grim, grim,
Is the road we go to the dead;
Yet we must on, for a Something dim
Pushes the soul ahead.
Where, where, where,
Through the dust and shadow of things
Will the fleeing Fates with their wild manes bear
These tribes of slaves and kings? ”

“ The rose-odor thickens—the deep gorge narrows;
Now the herd takes down through the scented dells.
Speed, speed, leave the brooks to their potter and prattle;
Sweep on with the thunder and surge of the cattle,
The hurry, the voices, the keen joy of battle—
The hills and the wind and the open light.
Now on into camp by the sycamores yonder;
77Now o’er the guitar let the light fingers wander;
Let thoughts in the high heart grow pensive and fonder;
Then stars and the dream of a summer night.
78 Song of the Fay
My life is a dream, a dream,
In the moon’s cool beam ”

“ When she quakes at the thought of the snows;
I count the blown leaves of the Fall,
And I comfort them all.
79Sometimes I awake with a start
In the song of a poet’s heart.
Some day I shall know life whole—
Shall suffer and find me a soul.
80 The World-Purpose
Men sadly say that Love’s high dream is vain,
That one force holds the heart—the hope of gain. ”

“ And let the whole world’s gladness be complete.{126}
Come with the face that hushed the heavens of old—
Come with Thy maidens in a mist of light;
Haste for the night falls and the shadows fold,
And voices cry and wander on the height.
{127} The Flying Mist
I watch afar the moving Mystery,
The wool-shod, formless terror of the sea—
The Mystery whose lightest touch can change
The world God made to phantasy, death-strange.
Under its spell all things grow old and gray
As they will be beyond the Judgment Day. ”

“ You’d heard my woodland pipe and left the sea—
Your hair blown gold and all your body white—
Had left the ocean-girls to follow me.{67}
We joined the hill-nymphs in their joyous flight,
And you laughed lightly to the sea, and sent
Quick glances flashing through me as I went.
{68} A Song at the Start
Oh, down the quick river our galley is going,
With a sound in the cordage, a beam on the sail:
The wind of the canyon our loose hair is blowing,
And the clouds of the morning are glad of the gale. ”

“ For youth is looking through his eyes.
Pale listener at the heart of things,
He hears the voices and the wings:
He hears the skylark overhead—
Hears the far footfalls of the dead.
When the swift Muses seize their child,
Then God has gladness rich and wild;
For when the bard is caught and hurled,
A splendor breaks across the world. ”

“ Looking with foolish faces on the rush
Of the Great Splendor, when the pulsing hush
Came o’er the hills, came o’er the heavens afar
Where on their cliff of stars the watching seraphs are.
Nor as of old when first the Strong One trod,
The Power of sepulchers—our Risen God! ”