Edwin Markham

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their blind feet drift in the darkness, and no one is leading;
Their toil is the pasture, where hyens and harpies are feeding;
In all lands and always, the wronged, the homeless, the humbled
Till the cliff-like pride of the spoiler is shaken and crumbled,
Till the Pillars of Hell are uprooted and left to their ruin,
And a rose garden gladdens the places no rose ever blew in,
Where now men huddle together and whisper and harken,
Or hold their bleak hands over embers that die out and darken. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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! ”

“ Up, day after day, in the dark before the dawn,
And coming home, night after night, through the dusk,
Swinging forward like some fierce silent animal,
I see a man doomed to roll a huge stone up an endless steep. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like to the dolorous hill that Dobell saw.
Around were heaps of ruins piled between
The Burn o' Sorrow and the Water o' Care;
And from the stillness of the down-crushed walls
One pillar rose up dark against the moon. ”

“ I ride with the voices of waterfalls!
I swing on as one in a dream—I swing
Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing!
The world is gone like an empty word:
My body's a bough in the wind, my heart a bird! ”

“ Apollo's cry is in the horns,
⁠And Hermes' whisper in the flutes.
We come with laughter to the Earth,
⁠And lightly stir the heading wheat:
Our God is Poesy and Mirth,
⁠And loves the noise of woodland feet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no new road for the dead to take:
⁠Wild hearts are we among the worlds astray—
Wild hearts are we that cannot wholly break,
⁠But linger on though life has gone away.
We are the sons of Misery and Eld:
⁠Come, tender Death, with all your hushing wings,
And let our broken spirits be dispelled—
⁠Let dead men sink into the dusk of things. ”

“ Like the moon in veil of vapor,
⁠When the rack of night is fleeing.
In the stone a dream is sleeping,
⁠Just a tinge of life, a tremor;
In the tree a soul is creeping—
Last, a rush of angels sweeping
⁠With the skies beyond the dreamer. ”

“ Oh, chide no more my doubting, my despair!
⁠I will go back now to the world of men.
Farewell, I leave thee to the world of air,
⁠Yet thou hast girded up my heart again;
For He that framed the impenetrable plan,
And keeps His word with thee, will keep with man. ”

“ Strange wares are handled on the wharves of sleep:
⁠Shadows of shadows pass, and many a light
⁠Flashes a signal fire across the night;
Barges depart whose voiceless steersmen keep
Their way without a star upon the deep ”

“ To my own secure abode.
All night long his tavern hung;
Now it rested, now it swung;
I asleep in steadfast tower,
He asleep in stirring flower;
In our hearts the same delight
In the hushes of the night ”

“ Noiseless, at night, the clouds assemble there;
And ghostly summits hang below the moon—
Dim visions lightly swung in silent air.
{95} The Climb of Life
There’s a feel of all things flowing,
And no power of Earth can bind them;
There’s a sense of all things growing,
And through all their forms a-glowing
Of the shaping souls behind them. ”

“ When rumor of winds and sound of sudden showers{48}
Disturb the dream of winter—all in vain
The grasses hurry to the graves, the flowers
Toss their wild torches on their windy towers;
Yet are the bleak graves lonely in the rain.
{49} In the Storm
I huddled close against the mighty cliff.
A sense of safety and of brotherhood
Broke on the heart: the shelter of a rock
Is sweeter than the roofs of all the world. ”

“ Men are shriveled up with hates;
Or they lie with sheeted Lust,
And they eat the bitter dust.
Ye are fraters in your hall,
Gay and chainless, great and small;
All are toilers in the field,
All are sharers in the yield.
But we mortals plot and plan
How to grind the fellow-man ”

“ A lyric child of mystery and grief.
⁠Then need I tell you why the trembling start—
Why in my song the sound of ocean dwells—
Why the quick gladness when the billow swells,
⁠As though remembered voices called the heart? ”

“ I know by the stir of the branches
⁠The way she went;
And at times I can see where a stem
⁠Of the grass is bent.
She's the secret and light of my life,
⁠She allures to elude;
But I follow the spell of her beauty,
⁠Whatever the mood. ”

“ By forest-hidden brink,
And fair hands draw him down to darkened wells;
Fair hands that hold him fast
With laughter at the last
Have power to draw him lightly down to be
In elfin chambers under the gray sea. ”

“ His home is in the heights: to him
Men wage a battle weird and dim,
Life is a mission stern as fate,
And Song a dread apostolate.
The toils of prophecy are his,
To hail the coming centuries—
To ease the steps and lift the load
Of souls that falter on the road. ”

“ And darkens its depths with foreknowledge of death;
Calls memories back on their path apace;
Sends desperate thoughts to the soul's dim place.
Time murders our youth with his sorrow and sin,
And pushes us on to the windowless inn. ”

“ O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?{18}
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries? ”

“ To give me a half-blown rose, a fire-white rose,
Its stem all warm yet from the tight-shut hand.
The little gift seemed somehow more to me
Than all men strive for in the turbid towns,
Than all they hoard up through a long wild life. ”

“ Had it grown old or young?
⁠Was it sweet memory or sad that stung
Her voiceless soul to wander from its place?
What do the dead find in the Silence—grace?
⁠Or endless grief for which there is no tongue? ”

“ That as men sow they surely reap,—
That every thought, that every deed,
Is sown into the soul for seed.
They have no word we do not know,—
Nor yet the cherubim aglow
With God: we know that virtue saves,—
They know no more beyond the graves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Love will outwatch the stars, and light the skies
⁠When the last star falls, and the silent dark devours;
⁠God's warrior, he will watch the allotted hours,
And conquer with the look of his sad eyes ”

“ I kiss my hands to the world with laughter—
⁠Is it Aidenn or mystical Ind?
Oh, the whirl of the fields in the windy weather!
How the barley breaks and blows together!
Oh, glad is the free bird afloat on the heather—
⁠Oh, the whole world is glad of the wind! ”

“ The Comrade Kingdom builded in their dream.
No, not as in that elder day
Comes now the King upon the human way.
He comes with power: His white unfearing face
Shines through the Social Passion of the race. ”