MODERN POETS 
 
 <ATSfD * <> < # 
 
 CHRISTIAN 
 TEACH TOG 
 
 GILDED 
 
 MAFtKHAM 
 
 SILL 
 
 DAVID G. DOWNEY 
 
 i 
 
MODERN POETS 
 
 AND 
 
 CHRISTIAN TEACHING 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID G. DOWNEY 
 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 
 
Copyright, 1906, by 
 EATON & MAINS. 
 
ps 
 
 
 i 
 
 rf 
 
 
 
 TO 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 TO 
 
 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 AND TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 WHOSE WRITINGS HAVE BEEN AN INSPIRATION 
 TO ME IN MY PERSONAL LIFE AND IN MY 
 MINISTRY AS A PREACHER OF THE 
 GOOD NEWS OF JESUS CHRIST, 
 THIS BOOK IS AFFEC 
 TIONATELY DED 
 ICATED. 
 
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 j t-*f-j t-j i 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Foreword : The Poet and the Preacher I 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 
 
 Biographical Sketch 9 
 
 The Man and His Message 15 
 
 The Influence of Christian Thought Illustrated 34 
 
 EDWIN MARKHAM. 
 
 Biographical Sketch 79 
 
 Markham s Message 84 
 
 The Influence of Christian Thought Illustrated 96 
 
 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. 
 
 The Man 137 
 
 The Nature and Quality of His Writing 141 
 
 Illustration of Christian Influence 156 
 
 Afterword: The Supremacy of the Spiritual 181 
 
PORTRAITS 
 
 Richard Watson Gilder Frontispiece 
 
 Edwin Markham Facing page 77 
 
 Edward Rowland Sill Facing page 135 
 
Friends, beware! 
 
 A keen, new sound is in the air, 
 Know ye a poet s coming is the old world s 
 judgment day ! 
 
 Richard Watson Gilder. 
 
f UNIX- 
 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 THE POET AND THE PREACHER 
 
 THE poet and the preacher have much in com 
 mon. They deal, in many instances, with the 
 same subject-matter. "My stress lay on the in 
 cidents in the development of a Soul; little else is 
 worthy of thought." So said Browning. And 
 what else is it that the preacher should busy him 
 self with ? Not only is the material to be handled 
 and molded common to both, but also the spirit 
 that makes for fit handling, for right development, 
 is found alike in poets and preachers of the highest 
 order. Every poet is a dreamer, a seer, a visionist. 
 So also is the preacher; indeed, in proportion as 
 he has the power to dream dreams and to see 
 visions is he the preacher of power and inspira 
 tion. What marvelous preaching there was on 
 Pentecost not only by Peter but by those asso 
 ciated with him. And the explanation is given: 
 "This is that which was spoken by the prophet 
 Joel: Your sons and your daughters shall 
 prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, 
 and your old men shall dream dreams." When 
 Arthur O Shaughnessy says: 
 
 We are the music makers, 
 
 And we are the dreamers of dreami, 
 i 
 
2 THE POET AND THE PREACHER 
 
 Wandering by lone sea breakers, 
 And sitting by desolate streams ; 
 
 World losers and world forsakers, 
 
 On whom the pale moon gleams; 
 Yet we are the movers and shakers 
 
 Of the world forever, it seems. 
 
 One man with a dream, at pleasure, 
 Shall go forth and conquer a crown; 
 
 And three with a new song s measure 
 Can trample a kingdom down, 
 
 he is depicting the true preacher as well as the 
 genuine poet. 
 
 This power of vision, common alike to poet and 
 preacher, is simply the ability to perceive the ideal. 
 And the ideal, again, is life at its richest and best. 
 The business of the preacher is to call out and 
 develop this highest and best possibility. He 
 must be able to see it in the last and lowest 
 man. The touch of vision must be upon him, so 
 that with Emerson he will know that 
 
 Tis not in the high stars alone, 
 Nor in the cups of budding flowers, 
 
 Nor in the redbreast s mellow tone, 
 Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, 
 
 But in the mud and scum of things 
 
 There alway, alway something sings. 
 
 It is not difficult to see that this ability or 
 faculty is the distinguishing mark of the mighty 
 preachers. David is surely a preacher of God s 
 
THE POET AND THE PREACHER 3 
 
 righteousness, providential care, and Fatherly 
 comfort. And he is all this, and all this so deeply 
 and genuinely, so feelingly and universally, be 
 cause he has the gift of inner spiritual vision. 
 The best things in Isaiah are those parts of his 
 message that glow and burn with the swift vision 
 and the incisive touch of the dreamer and seer. 
 Jesus is the supreme visionist; no one without this 
 power could have weighed and balanced the imma 
 terial and material worlds in his thought, and 
 expressed the result in a sentence that has stood 
 the test of two thousand years, and will stand till 
 the end of time: "What shall it profit a man, if 
 he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
 soul ?" That is the eternal and eternally true 
 comparison. And it is so because it is not the 
 result of logic, but the swift and sure deduction 
 of a vision that penetrates to the depths, and in 
 terprets with infallible certainty the very heart 
 and life of things. Paul is mighty as a debater, 
 and as a forceful preacher of doctrine; but will any 
 one deny that the finest utterances of Paul are found 
 in those passages that glow and burn with the 
 vision and insight of the poet ? "Though I speak 
 with the tongues of men and of angels, but have 
 not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a 
 tinkling cymbal." Nothing that Paul ever 
 wrote has more of eternal truth and abidingness 
 
4 THE POET AND THE PREACHER 
 
 than this, that Dean Stanley calls "a hymn in 
 praise of Divine Love." 
 
 Who will say that there is not as much vigorous 
 and vital theology in the hymns of Charles Wesley, 
 Isaac Watts, and Ray Palmer as in the sermons 
 of John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and Phillips 
 Brooks ? It is not alone the logician who con 
 vinces and wins; often the singer and the seer, who 
 outlines, and suggests, and reveals, is quite as 
 powerful an influence. The true poet, then, when 
 he touches the great questions of life, becomes 
 unconsciously a theologian. Some of the best 
 theology the most truly biblical,! mean is found 
 imbedded, as gold or diamonds in precious soil, 
 in the stanzas of the poets. Professor Winchester 
 says: "Such a work as the In Memoriam, a hun 
 dred years hence, will be accounted a truer picture 
 of the vital thought at the middle of the nineteenth 
 century than all our formal philosophies and theolo 
 gies put together." And Professor Olin A. Curtis, 
 in his book of theology, The Christian Faith, tells 
 us that "in the poetry of Robert Browning one 
 can come closer to the whole reality of human life 
 than he can in any scientific treatise published in 
 the last hundred years." The poets of whom we 
 are thinking speak because they have a message; 
 like as in the prophet of old, it is a fire in the 
 bones that must burst into flame. And just here 
 
THE POET AND THE PREACHER 5 
 
 is the poet s value to the preacher; dealing with 
 the same subject-matter, imbued with the same 
 interpreting spirit or quality, controlled with the 
 same high sense of duty and mission that ought 
 to control every preacher, he utters his message in 
 forms of abiding beauty and power, puts his 
 bugle to his lips and scatters "a divine contagion 
 on mankind." 
 
 This little volume is an attempt to interpret some 
 of the poets of our day; to show how their thoughts, 
 consciously or unconsciously, have been molded 
 and influenced by the great body of Christian 
 truth that has filtered through the ages; to make 
 clear what may be the special message of these 
 poets to our own time; to estimate the spiritual 
 value of this message, and to illustrate all this by 
 appropriate selections from their published poems. 
 
RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God. 
 -Jesus. 
 
 Keep pure thy soul ! 
 
 Then shalt thou take the whole 
 
 Of delight; 
 
 Then, without a pang, 
 
 Thine shall be all of beauty whereof the poet sang 
 
 The perfume, and the pageant, the melody, the mirth 
 
 Of the golden day and the starry night; 
 
 Of heaven, and of earth. 
 
 Oh, keep pure thy soul ! Gilder. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 F 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 ANYONE fairly familiar with Methodist history 
 and literature would naturally surmise that a boy 
 baptized into the name of the author of Watson s 
 Institutes must have had a strong and sturdy 
 Methodist ancestry. In the case of Richard 
 Watson Gilder this surmise would be found cor 
 rect. His paternal grandfather, John Gilder, was 
 a member of the State Legislature and of the 
 Board of Councilmen of Philadelphia in the days 
 when membership in such a board indicated integ 
 rity, mental and moral. This John Gilder was a 
 man of independent thought and progressive spirit, 
 as may be judged from the fact that the records 
 show him as advocating and pushing to a successful 
 issue the proposition to introduce illuminating 
 gas into the homes of Philadelphia; this, too, in 
 spite of a very strenuous opposition, based, among 
 other objections, on the argument that such intro 
 duction would be extremely hazardous, and would 
 seriously endanger the lives and properties of the 
 citizens. That he was a man held in high repute 
 by his fellow citizens is evident from the fact that 
 he was president of the Board of Builders of Girard 
 College, and laid the corner stone of that highly 
 distinguished institution. Also he was a gen- 
 
 2 9 
 
io RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 uinely religious man, a class leader in the 
 Methodist Church in the days when men of 
 probity and clear brain, occupying this position, 
 did so much to strengthen and develop the in 
 tellectual and spiritual life of the Methodist type 
 of Christianity. 
 
 Philadelphia, in the time of which we write, 
 was one of the strongholds numerically, finan 
 cially, and spiritually of American Methodism; 
 a glory that has not yet wholly departed. It is not 
 surprising that with such a parentage and such an 
 environment two sons of John Gilder, John L. and 
 William Henry, should have joined the ranks of 
 the itinerant Methodist ministry. The latter of 
 these, William H. Gilder, married Jane Nutt; 
 and of this union there was born, at Bordentown, 
 New Jersey, February 8, 1844, the subject of our 
 sketch, Richard Watson Gilder. The father of 
 Richard Watson was a man of excellent literary 
 taste and of fine scholarship. He was at one time 
 editor of the Philadelphia Repository, and also of 
 the Literary Register, and was later interested in 
 The Methodist, and became its regular corre 
 spondent from the seat of war. While Richard was 
 still a child his father established and was presi 
 dent of the Female Seminary at Flushing, New 
 York. Afterward he entered the army, went to 
 the front as chaplain of the Fortieth New York 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH n 
 
 Volunteers, and died in the heroic performance 
 of duty, as he conceived it, ministering to the sol 
 diers stricken with smallpox. 
 
 Our author received his education almost entirely 
 in the little seminary at Flushing and later from 
 private tutors. His vocation was early indicated. 
 At the age of twelve he is publishing a little foot- 
 square paper, for which he himself sets the type 
 and does all the work. A little later he, with some 
 youthful companions, is publishing a campaign 
 paper at Bordentown, New Jersey. At the death 
 of his father young Gilder is thrown upon his own 
 resources, and after one or two tentative attempts 
 we find him finally settled into his life s work, first 
 as reporter on the Newark Advertiser, and then 
 successively legislative correspondent, local editor, 
 and managing editor. A little later, in con 
 junction with Mr. R. Newton Crane, he started 
 the Newark Morning Register, a daily publication; 
 and about the same time he assumed the editor 
 ship of Hours at Home, a New York monthly, 
 published by the Scribners, for which he had pre 
 viously written editorials. 
 
 The newspaper venture was not a success finan 
 cially, and finally had to be given up. When 
 Scribner s Monthly was started, Hours at Home 
 was incorporated with it, and Dr. Holland, editor- 
 in-chief of the new publication, associated Mr. 
 
12 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 Gilder with himself as managing editor. During 
 the eleven years of Mr. Gilder s association with 
 Dr. Holland the magazine was greatly enlarged, 
 and when, in 1881, the doctor died it was 
 natural and inevitable that his successor should 
 be his former brilliant and indefatigable man 
 aging editor. Thus we see that at the age of 
 twenty-six Richard Watson Gilder, as has well 
 been said, "found himself in a position of honor 
 and high literary influence," and at thirty-six 
 the name meanwhile having been changed from 
 Scribner s to The Century he is editor-in-chief 
 of one of the leading literary magazines of the 
 country. 
 
 The poetic instinct is native to Mr. Gilder. It 
 is as natural for him to express himself in poetry 
 as for other men to speak or write in prose. Dur 
 ing his busy editorial career he has also been writing 
 verse destined to live and have abiding influence. 
 His publications are gathered in the following 
 volumes: Five Books of Song, 1894, in which 
 are included The New Day, The Celestial Pas 
 sion, Lyrics, Two Worlds, and The Great Remem 
 brance. To these must be added In Palestine, 
 Poems and Inscriptions, and his recently pub 
 lished volume, In the Heights. All bear the 
 imprint of The Century Company. 
 
 In addition to all this Mr. Gilder is a frequent; 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 13 
 
 presence at distinguished literary, social, and 
 civic events. To college and university occasions 
 he contributes by voice and pen; and though he 
 will not allow himself to be called "Doctor," he 
 has received honorary degrees from Harvard, 
 Princeton, Yale, Dickinson, and Wesleyan. It 
 would be tedious, as it is needless, to specify the 
 literary, artistic, and social clubs, associations, and 
 other organizations that have been honored by 
 his membership and helped by his wise and 
 effective counsel and leadership. 
 
 This sketch may fitly close with the statement 
 that he was the first president of the Kindergarten 
 Association of New York, and had a large share in 
 the establishment of free kindergartens in New 
 York city. Also, he was chairman of the Tene 
 ment House Commission, New York, 1894, and 
 gave to it many months of painstaking and dis 
 criminating thought and service. Much of the 
 improved condition in New York city tenements 
 is due to Mr. Gilder s unselfish labor. 
 
 In 1874 Mr. Gilder married Miss Helena 
 DeKay, daughter of Commodore DeKay, and 
 granddaughter of Joseph Rodman Drake. He has 
 a city home in the neighborhood of Washington 
 Square, New York, of which neighborhood he says : 
 
 This is the end of the town that I love the best. 
 
 Oh, lovely the hour of light from the burning west 
 
14 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 Of light that lingers and fades in the shadowy square 
 Where the solemn fountain lifts a shaft in the air 
 To catch the skyey colors, and fling them down 
 In a wild wood torrent that drowns the noise of the town. 
 
 Also a country residence in Tyringham, among 
 the Berkshire Hills; and of this latter he sings: 
 
 Down in the meadow and up on the height 
 The breezes are blowing the willows white. 
 In the elms and maples the robins call, 
 And the great black crow sails over all 
 
 In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley. 
 
 The river winds through the trees and the brake 
 And the meadow grass like a shining snake ; 
 And low in the summer and loud in the spring 
 The rapids and reaches murmur and sing 
 
 In Tyringham, Tyringham Valley. 
 
THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE 
 
 THE MAN 
 
 To understand and rightly estimate our author 
 we need something more than the biographical 
 data. What are some of his intellectual and moral 
 inheritances; what was the nature of his early 
 environment; and what the character of that per 
 sonality which inevitably molds and controls 
 heredity and environment to one s own ends and 
 aims ? From his paternal grandfather, John 
 Gilder, it is easy to see that Richard Watson 
 inherits his practical interest in men and affairs. 
 He cannot be content merely to write and advise; 
 to utter beautiful sentiments, and leave the practical 
 application of these sentiments to others. He is 
 himself a tireless toiler in ways that make for social 
 and civic betterment. What has already been 
 noted in our biographical sketch, concerning his 
 interest in kindergarten development and tenement 
 house reform, is proof enough of his practical sym 
 pathy and effort for the life of to-day. From his 
 father comes not only spiritual sensitiveness and 
 literary instinct, but also a high moral enthusiasm 
 that keeps him toiling at tasks that can hardly be 
 naturally agreeable to one of his temperament; 
 
16 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 because, like Paul, he feels he is debtor to all men. 
 Unconsciously he realizes that the gifts and graces, 
 the abilities and capacities of life are not for selfish 
 ease and personal enjoyment, but for useful serv 
 ice. And this truth of the nobility of service he 
 not only urges and glorifies in his poems, but exem 
 plifies in his life. Dr. William V. Kelley speaks 
 simple truth when he says, " Life, its tasks, duties, 
 and responsibilities, are immensely sacred to 
 Richard Watson Gilder." I fancy he would 
 heartily subscribe to the truth of Fanny Kemble s 
 lines : 
 
 A sacred burden is this life ye bear ; 
 Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, 
 Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly. 
 Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, 
 But onward upward, till the goal ye win. 
 
 His mother was a woman of quiet and beautiful 
 life, with a poetic nature, and a mind much given 
 to beautiful dreams and exquisite ideals that have 
 come into concrete form in the life and work of her 
 boy. From her comes, doubtless, the delicate and 
 dreamy, the sensitive and responsive poetic tend 
 ency, Her influence is not doubtful, for he him 
 self has told us how enduring it is. In one of his 
 poems he speaks of the depression that comes as 
 one sees the world rewarding vice and punishing 
 innocence, man clinging to his low, brutish nature; 
 nature itself careless or cruel; but his mother s 
 
THE MAN 17 
 
 face glows in vision and he takes heart of grace 
 and sings: 
 
 These are forever with me, but grow dim 
 When I remember my sweet mother s face. 
 Somewhere, at heart of all. the right must reign, 
 If in the garden of the infinite 
 Such loveliness be brought to perfect bloom. 
 
 And can anything be more exquisitely filial and 
 tender than these lines from Poems and Inscrip 
 tions ? 
 
 Many the names, the souls, the faces dear 
 That I have longed to frame in verse sincere; 
 But one high name, sweet soul, and face of love 
 Seemed ever my poor art, oh, far above. 
 Like Mary s, stricken with sorrow was that face; 
 Like hers it wore a most majestic grace. 
 That soul was tender as the sunset sky, 
 And full of lofty dream her days went by ; 
 That name than God s alone there is no other 
 Holy as thine to me, O sacred Mother! 
 
 Fortunate as Mr. Gilder is in his heredity, he 
 is equally so in the matter of early environment, 
 and in the quality of the influences that touched 
 him in the plastic years of early boyhood. Among 
 his father s intimate friends were the Rev. 
 Drs. John McClintock, George R. Crooks, and 
 James Strong. If there ever was an aristocracy 
 of Methodism an aristocracy sprung from the 
 union of culture and spirituality these men were 
 surely among its chosen representatives. Moncure 
 D. Conway, who cannot be accused of any bias 
 
i8 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 toward the Methodism he has left and disparaged, 
 knew some of these men. When he entered Dickin 
 son College he found them in the faculty, and in 
 his recently published Autobiography 1 says of 
 them: "The classical department was represented 
 by Dr. John McClintock and Dr. George R. 
 Crooks, who were Broad Church Methodists 
 and original thinkers." Of Professor McClin 
 tock he says: "His scholarship and literary 
 accomplishments brought his pen into much 
 demand for the Methodist Quarterly and other 
 publications. He kept abreast of theological and 
 philosophical inquiries in Europe and America. 
 We were all proud of his reputation. " After hear 
 ing a sermon from Professor Crooks, based on 
 I Cor. 13, he writes: "Whether then, or before, 
 or afterward, a great love for Crooks sprang in 
 my breast. I presently had him for my patron/ 
 and I never knew a better man. Our friendship 
 continued through life, and his death bereaved 
 me of one from whose affection no doctrinal differ 
 ences could ever alienate me." Conway did not 
 know Dr. Strong, but those of us who did know 
 him know well how worthy a member he was of 
 that unique and high-souled group McClintock, 
 Crooks, Strong, and Gilder. Writing in the Chris 
 tian Advocate of August 30, 1894, shortly after 
 
 Vol. I, pp. 47. S. 54- 
 
THE MAN 19 
 
 Dr. Strong s death, Mr. Gilder pays tribute to his 
 worth and to the abiding influence of his words 
 and works. "May I claim a little space here/ 
 he says, "for a brief personal tribute to my dear 
 and lifelong friend Dr. James Strong ? There are 
 very many who have had with him the relation 
 of pupil to master, but I think there must be few 
 who so early in life came in such close contact 
 with the doctor. ... It was for a little class 
 of students that met in his study on Bridge Street 
 (Flushing) that he made his Greek and Hebrew 
 grammars. That class consisted of several clergy 
 men and teachers, and one very small boy whose 
 teacher helped generously his strenuous efforts to 
 keep up in the scholarly procession of his elders. 
 . . . How kind and helpful he was may well be 
 imagined; but outside of this (in his official capac 
 ity as Sunday school teacher and class leader, 
 and in his personal relations as friend and spiritual 
 guide), how gentle and wise he was with a boy 
 who took too seriously, no doubt, the conventional 
 rules and precepts of religion. All this cannot be 
 fully told without going too deeply into matters 
 of personal concern. The nobility of his nature, 
 his brightness of spirit, and wisdom in dealing 
 with perplexities and burdens of mind and soul 
 how invaluable such an influence (added to simi 
 lar influences on the part of the beloved parents) 
 
2o RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 in training the spirit and driving moroianess 
 from the mind of a child in whose nature aesthetic 
 instincts and traditional pietistic teachings were 
 making dangerous warfare." One can readily see 
 how much the intellectual strength, the spiritual 
 sanity, and the sanctified common sense of James 
 Strong had to do with the early making of Richard 
 Watson Gilder. 
 
 But we can never safely neglect the personal 
 equation. Shy and reticent, inclined, as we see 
 by the extract just given, to somewhat too serious 
 and, probably, morbidly conscientious a view of 
 religion, none the less this sensitive and timid boy 
 had his own ideas and ideals. That intangible 
 but most real and powerful something that we 
 name the "Ego" was at work upon heredity and 
 environment, molding and fusing them at its own 
 behest. The son of a preacher, this man is not a 
 preacher in the technical sense or after the 
 accepted order. The companion and friend of theo 
 logians, and of scholars in special and abstruse de 
 partments of thought, he is neither a linguistic pro 
 fessor nor the framer or defender of theological 
 creeds. But even as these men, his companions, 
 friends, intellectual and spiritual guides, had 
 their message for their day, and uttered it with 
 freedom and with force, so he has his message, 
 and in the same spirit that animated them he 
 
THE MAN 21 
 
 utters it freely and sends it out fearlessly. That 
 he feels this, and realizes not only the privileges but 
 the duty of self-expression, is evident from what he 
 says in "Art and Life": 
 
 Said the Seer to the Poet: Arise 
 And give to the seas and the skies 
 The message that in thee burns. 
 Thrice speak, though the blue sky turns 
 Deaf ears, and the ocean spurns 
 Thy call. Though men despise 
 The word that from out thy heart 
 Flameth, do thou thy part. 
 
 In the home of thy spirit be true, 
 Though the voice of the street cry shame. 
 
 Not only does he feel himself possessed of a 
 message that must be uttered, obligated with a 
 mission that must be performed; but also he 
 knows the meaning of message and mission. 
 This he interprets and sets clearly forth in "The 
 Poet and His Master." The Poet is complaining 
 to his Master that he cannot sing because of 
 the woes of his dearest friend. His heart is heavy 
 and his lyre is unstrung. Then the Master speaks : 
 
 "Alas, and hast thou then so soon forgot 
 The bond that with thy gift of song did go 
 Severe as fate, fixed and unchangeable? 
 Even though his heart be sounding its own knell 
 Dost thou not know this is the poet s lot : 
 Mid sounds of war, in halcyon times of peace, 
 To strike the ringing wire and not to cease ; 
 In hours of general happiness to swell 
 
22 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 The common joy; and when the people cry 
 With piteous voice loud to the pitiless sky, 
 Tis his to frame the universal prayer 
 And breathe the balm of song upon the accursM 
 air?" 
 
 He strikes even a deeper note than this. It 
 is not enough for the poet to feel that he has a mes 
 sage that must be delivered, a mission that may 
 not be shirked; not enough even rightly to inter 
 pret the scope of that message and mission. He 
 needs also to know and touch the source of abid 
 ing inspiration, knowledge, and truth. Whence 
 shall he gain the wisdom and skill and strength 
 for the duty and work that must be done ? That our 
 poet knows the home of wisdom, the secret place 
 of truth, and the dwelling place of strength is evi 
 dent when one gets at the truth enshrined in 
 "The Master Poets": 
 
 He the great World-Musician, at whose stroke 
 The stars of morning into music broke ; 
 He from whose Being Infinite are caught 
 All harmonies of light, and sound, and thought 
 Once in each age, to keep the world in tune 
 He strikes a note sublime . Nor late , nor soon , 
 A godlike soul music and passion s birth 
 Vibrates across the discord of the earth 
 And sets the world aright. 
 
 Oh, these are they 
 Who on men s hearts with mightiest power can 
 
 play 
 
 The master-poets of humanity, 
 From heaven sent down to lift men to the sky. 
 
THE MESSAGE 23 
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 The message of Gilder s poetry to our day can 
 not be compassed in a single sentence. His is a 
 comprehensive muse that deals with many sub 
 jects. A harp he has of many strings sending out 
 notes and harmonies of many sorts. Wordsworth 
 
 speaks of 
 
 that blessed mood, 
 
 In which the burthen of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world, 
 Is lightened: . 
 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 This mood is Gilder s. He sees into and inter 
 prets the life of things. Our age is surely 
 engrossed in the material, absorbed in business 
 and pleasure. What Emerson said of his day is 
 equally true of our time: 
 
 The horseman serves the horse, 
 
 The neatherd serves the neat, 
 The merchant serves the purse, 
 
 The eater serves his meat; 
 Tis the day of the chattel, 
 
 Web to weave and corn to grind ; 
 Things are in the saddle, 
 
 And ride mankind. 
 
 It is to such an age that Gilder s verse is 
 directed. To men and women occupied with the 
 
24 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 material, he sings of the value of the spiritual. To 
 a day all too easily satisfied with surfaces, he 
 speaks of substance and reality. To a time that, 
 as one of the ancients said, 
 
 Does not abolish the gods, 
 
 But sends them well out of the way; 
 
 With the rarest of nectar to drink, 
 
 And the blue halls of nothing to sway, 
 
 he offers a God present and active, immanent and 
 interested in all the avenues of man s manifold 
 activity: 
 
 Heardst thou these wanderers reasoning of a time 
 When men more near the Eternal One shall climb? 
 How like the newborn child, who cannot tell 
 A mother s arm that wraps it warm and well! 
 Leaves of His rose ; drops in His sea that flow 
 Are they, alas, so blind they may not know 
 Here, in this breathing world of joy and fear, 
 They can no nearer get to God than here. 
 
 In this he is at one with the psalmist, whose soul 
 is satisfied with nothing less than the living God; 
 and with Tennyson, who sings: 
 
 Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can 
 
 meet 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. 
 
 He is the poet of the deeper, truer, and higher life 
 of man. In his emphasis and unfoldment of that 
 life there are many notes. 
 

 
 THE MESSAGE 25 
 
 One note of his message is surely concerning 
 the cleanness of life. Whether he deals with 
 nature, or human nature, he believes what is writ 
 ten : " And God saw everything that he had made, 
 and, behold, it was very good." He believes, 
 again, that the things of God are not to be called, 
 or made, common or unclean by any narrow or 
 meager thought of man. His own nature is so 
 healthy and clean that it fits him to be the inter 
 preter of God s thought in the creation of nature 
 and humanity. 
 
 Thy mind is like a crystal brook 
 
 Wherein clean creatures live at ease, 
 
 In sun-bright waves or shady nook. 
 
 Birds sing above it, 
 
 The warm-breathed cattle love it, 
 It doth sweet childhood please, 
 
 may well stand as the motto and symbol of his 
 thought and writing. That men may degenerate, 
 that the high purpose of creation may be frustrated, 
 that the clean things of God may become unclean 
 in the handling of low-thoughted men, he sees as 
 well as anyone. But his effort always is to show 
 the bright and beautiful, the high and holy pur 
 pose of the whole sweep of life. His Prelude in 
 "The Celestial Passion" is a plea for purity, white 
 as snow upon the untrodden Alpine peaks; flaw 
 less as the unstained nature of the angelic host. 
 3 
 
26 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 Its genesis was as follows: One evening in a 
 somewhat general company he had been forced 
 to hear the gossip of suspicion and of acrid criti 
 cism. As he walked homeward, though he had 
 taken no part in the slantwise and gossipy talk, 
 his sensitive nature felt humiliated; unconsciously 
 his moral nature had been soiled; he felt as 
 the traveler who, through no fault of his own, 
 has been begrimed with the soil and stain of the 
 journey, and must have a bath before he can feel 
 comfortable and clean. So his inner spirit felt, 
 and the Prelude is the expression of that feeling: 
 
 O white and midnight sky! O starry bath ! 
 
 Wash me in thy pure, heavenly, crystal flood; 
 Cleanse me, ye stars, from earthly soil and scath; 
 
 Let not one taint remain in spirit or blood! 
 Receive my soul, ye burning, awful deeps; 
 
 Touch and baptize me with the mighty power 
 That in ye thrills, while the dark planet sleeps; 
 
 Make me all yours for one blest, secret hour! 
 O glittering host! O high angelic choir! 
 
 Silence each tone that with thy music jars ; 
 Fill me even as an urn with thy white fire 
 
 Till all I am is kindred to the stars! 
 Make me thy child, thou infinite, holy night 
 So shall my days be full of heavenly light! 
 
 Another note in this poet s message is the high 
 seriousness of life. The ethical character of even 
 life s little things is evident to this interpreter of 
 man s deeper nature. How well and clearly is 
 
THE MESSAGE 27 
 
 this portrayed in the lines entitled "One Deed 
 May Mar a Life": 
 
 One deed may mar a life, 
 
 And one can make it ; 
 Hold firm thy will for strife, 
 
 Lest a quick blow break it! 
 Even now from far on viewless wing 
 Hither speeds the nameless thing 
 
 Shall put thy spirit to the test. 
 Haply, or e er yon sinking sun 
 
 Shall drop behind the purple West 
 All shall be lost or won! 
 
 And what is more indicative of this ethical sense, 
 this sanely religious view of life, than such simple 
 and perfect lines as these ? 
 
 Each moment holy is, for out from God 
 
 Each moment flashes forth a human soul. 
 
 Holy each moment is, for back to him 
 
 Some wandering soul each moment home returns. 
 
 The religiousness that Mr. Gilder believes in 
 is not the sort that expresses itself in formal 
 fashion or with stereotyped phrase. It does not 
 content itself with easily and glibly repeating 
 the religious concepts of other days and other men. 
 Rather it is fealty to truth, loyalty to right and 
 righteousness, and, back of all that, loyalty to the 
 God of truth and right and righteousness. In 
 these days, when so many men seem to have lost 
 moral sensitiveness; when conscience and the 
 
28 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 sense of right seem, if not dead, then surely dull 
 and blunted; when men high in the world of civics 
 and commerce stand convicted of low ideals, base, 
 selfish, and ignoble aims, willing to sacrifice sacred 
 trusts for the gaining of pelf and power and place, 
 how heartening and strengthening it is to hear our 
 author say: 
 
 He fails who climbs to power and place 
 Up the pathway of disgrace. 
 He fails not who makes truth his cause, 
 Nor bends to win the crowd s applause. 
 He fails not, he who stakes his all 
 Upon the right, and dares to fall; 
 What though the living bless or blame, 
 For him the long success of fame. 
 
 The bugle here gives no uncertain sound. 
 Whenever he deals with human life, either in the 
 abstract or in relations, his touch is swift and sure. 
 The ethical concept is never absent. Life is the 
 all-important fact; all else is secondary. Well 
 does he say, "Thou who hast wisdom, fear not 
 Death, but Life!" Man is no trifler to spend his 
 time with the toys and passing pleasures of the 
 moment. Nor is he to spend his years in repining 
 and moping because of life s pains and privations, 
 its adversities and oppositions. Rather he is to 
 rejoice in the high privilege of loyalty to truth 
 and duty the royal opportunity of the ordinary 
 hour and day: 
 
THE MESSAGE 29 
 
 Give thy day to Duty! 
 
 To that high thought be given 
 
 Thine every hour. 
 
 So shall the bending heaven, 
 
 As from the root the flower, 
 
 Bring to thy glad soul Beauty. 
 
 In the Heights. 
 
 Another note in the poet s message is the no 
 bility and dignity of service. Some men toil and 
 agonize in the effort to possess that they may 
 be free from the pressure of obligation. Said 
 a man of large wealth, "The habit of my life 
 has been to acquire; you do not know how hard 
 it is for me to give." Mr. Gilder understands 
 that the true law of life is that the more we have 
 the more we owe. Possession, capacity, gifts, 
 or powers in any sphere are a sacred and holy 
 trust. We have been put in possession of these 
 things not to hoard, but to use, and to enjoy in 
 the using; "not to be ministered unto, but to min 
 ister." In "The Poet and His Master," already 
 referred to, he clearly shows that the business 
 of the poet is not merely to sing when his own 
 soul is full of peace and joy, but even in time of 
 disappointment and bitter agony; then also he 
 must utter his song, for his work is to comfort 
 and strengthen and cheer his fellow sufferers. 
 When the Poet would cease because of his per- 
 .sonal grief, because of the misinterpretations and 
 
30 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 malignments of the ignorant or wicked, then the 
 Master says: 
 
 I bid thee sing, even though I have not told 
 All the deep flood of anguish shall be rolled 
 Across thy breast. Nor, Poet, shalt thou bring 
 From out those depths thy grief! Tell to the wind 
 Thy private woes, but not to human ear, 
 Save in the shape of comfort for thy kind. 
 But never hush thy song, dare not to cease 
 While life is thine. Haply, mid those who hear, 
 Thy music to one soul shall murmur peace, 
 Though for thyself it hath no power to cheer. 
 
 Then shall thy still unbroken spirit grow 
 Strong in its silent suffering and more wise ; 
 And as the drenched and thunder-shaken skies 
 Pass into golden sunset thou shalt know 
 An end of calm, when evening breezes blow; 
 And looking on thy life with vision fine 
 Shalt see the shadow of a hand divine. 
 
 The poet has no right to inflict his personal 
 woes and losses upon the world. The pessimism 
 that would weaken and dishearten the many be 
 cause of individual grievance has no place in liter 
 ature. With Emerson he holds that the individual 
 is not to depress and dishearten others with his tale 
 of woe. He is to "consume his own smoke," 
 and by the right understanding of all life s hap 
 penings he is to be the inbringer of light, and com 
 fort, and strength. A significant, and at the same 
 time a pathetic, illustration of the high, incalcu 
 lable value of service is set forth in his poem "Pro 
 
THE MESSAGE 31 
 
 Patria," which is not only an illustration of this 
 part of our poet s message, but also a filial tribute 
 to the memory of his father: 
 
 True soldier of his country and the sacred cross 
 
 He counted gain, not loss, 
 Perils and nameless horrors of the embattled field, 
 
 While he had help to yield. 
 
 But not where mid wild cheers the awful battle broke, 
 
 A hell of fire and smoke, 
 He to heroic death went forth with soul elate ; 
 
 Harder his lonely fate. 
 
 Searching where most was needed, worst of all endured, 
 
 Sufferers he found immured, 
 Tented apart because of fatal, foul disease, 
 
 Balm brought he unto these; 
 
 Celestial balm, the spirit s holy ministry, 
 
 He brought, and only he ; 
 Where men who blanched not at the battle s shell and shot 
 
 Trembled, and entered not. 
 
 Yet life to him was oh., most dear, home, children, wife, 
 
 But, dearer still than life, 
 Duty that passion of the soul which from the sod 
 
 Alone lifts man to God. 
 
 The pesthouse entering fearless stricken he fearless fell, 
 
 Knowing that all was well ; 
 The high, mysterious Power whereof mankind has dreamed 
 
 To him not distant seemed. 
 
 So nobly died this unknown hero of the war; 
 
 And heroes, near and far, 
 Sleep now in graves like his unfamed in song or story 
 
 But theirs is more than glory! 
 
 The same truth is emphasized in his little poem 
 "A Hero of Peace," in memory of Robert Ross, 
 
32 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 who lost his life in defending the sacredness of the 
 elective franchise. It is a call to a deeper and 
 truer interest, on the part of the average citizen, 
 in the things that make for civic purity and better 
 ment: 
 
 Thy deed, thy date, thy name 
 
 Are wreathed with deathless flowers. 
 Thy fate shall be the guiding flame 
 That lights to nobler hours. 
 
 Also in his recent volume, In the Heights, will be 
 found a group of songs which both by content and 
 intent discover the mountain peaks of civic achieve 
 ment which it should ever be the ambition of high- 
 souled men to scale. One who would understand 
 Mr. Gilder s thought about the privilege and worth 
 of service in the betterment and upbuilding of the 
 city and the state will do well to read "Inaugura 
 tion Day," "Builders of the State," "For the City 
 Clubs," and, perhaps best of all, "The Great Citi 
 zen," written in memory of Abram S. Hewitt, 
 and read by Bishop Potter at the funeral of that 
 highly influential man: 
 
 Talents and wealth to him were but a trust 
 To lift his hapless brother from the dust. 
 
 Following the truth, he led his fellow men, 
 Through years and virtues the great citizen! 
 
 By being great he made the city great, 
 Serving the city, he upheld the state. 
 
 So shall the city win a purer fame 
 Led by the living splendor of his name. 
 
THE MESSAGE 33 
 
 The illustration of this phase of our poet s mes 
 sage may well be concluded with an extract from 
 "The Great Remembrance" lines read at the 
 annual reunion of the Society of the Army of the 
 Potomac, in Faneuil Hall, 1893. In these lines 
 we see the wide sweep of the poet s thought. Serv 
 ice, helpfulness, brotherhood, and kindliness are 
 not merely individual qualities. The duty and 
 privilege of all this is not confined to the individual, 
 but belongs as well to all the organizations and 
 institutions of humanity. The meaning of society 
 and government is human uplift, a thoughtful serv- 
 iceableness that shall be world-wide and mutu 
 ally beneficial and helpful. Hear him as he 
 shadows forth the high privilege and the holy 
 duty of this favored land and people: 
 
 Land that we love ! Thou Future of the World ! 
 
 Thou refuge of the noble heart oppressed! 
 Oh, never be thy shining image hurled 
 
 From its high place in the adoring breast 
 Of him who worships thee with jealous love! 
 Keep thou thy starry forehead as the dove 
 All white, and to the eternal Dawn inclined! 
 Thou art not for thyself but for mankind, 
 And to despair of thee were to despair 
 Of man, of man s high destiny, of God! 
 
 To despair of thee! Ah no! 
 For thou thyself art Hope, Hope of the World thou an! 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIAN 
 THOUGHT ILLUSTRATED 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL NOTE 
 
 ALL who have carefully studied the work of Mr. 
 Gilder have been impressed with its high moral 
 quality and its rich spiritual suggestiveness. He 
 deals with those deeper instincts, feelings, and 
 aspirings 
 
 which, be they what they may, 
 Are yet the fountain-light of all our day; 
 Are yet a master-light of all our seeing. 
 
 In an article written some fifteen years since, and 
 published in The Christian Advocate, Professor 
 Winchester, of Wesleyan University, thus estimates 
 the poetry of Mr. Gilder: "The most striking 
 things in his work are a certain high seriousness 
 and a wealth of spiritual suggestion. His gift 
 is distinctively lyrical, but his lyrics are of an 
 uncommon variety. They are the lyrics not of 
 passion or of action, but of thought. Their emo 
 tion is born, in almost every case, of some spir 
 itual perception. The best of these sonnets are 
 moments of insight, in which some truth, too large 
 or too subtle to be confined within the limits of 
 straight dogmatic statement, rises against the 
 inner eye. In these days, when a vulgar realism 
 
 34 
 
THE SPIRITUAL NOTE 35 
 
 is the fashion in fiction, and a pretty artificiality is 
 the fashion in poetry, it is refreshing to come upon 
 verse which dwells habitually upon the higher 
 planes of thought and feeling." And Dr. 
 William V. Kelley, editor of the Methodist 
 Review, in an article in that periodical in Septem 
 ber, 1900, entitled "The Religion of Gilder s 
 Poetry, " writes : " If better, worthier poetry than 
 Richard Watson Gilder s is now being written 
 anywhere in America, we do not know where to find 
 it. It is rich, delicate, refined, artistic, beautiful. 
 In it there is nothing flippant or cheap, irreverent 
 or carnal. Its spirituality is an antidote to the 
 manifold materialism of our time. . . . Most 
 of it is essentially lyrical, full of feeling, deep, 
 genuine, intense, uttering in simple poetry, and 
 in words felicitous, musical, effective, its cry of 
 aspiration, of love, of faith, of admiration, of 
 patriotism, of adoration. It is ethical in every 
 note, and makes pervasively for righteousness." 
 
 In such a poet there is of necessity a constant 
 play and interchange of the religious concepts of 
 the ages with the poet s own interpretation and use 
 of these concepts. In this respect he is the heir of 
 all the ages, and his debt to " dear old Anonymous " 
 is simply inconceivable. Indeed, Mr. Gilder him 
 self acknowledges that the old leaven of his fathers 
 is deep in his mind and heart, and that he cannot 
 
36 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 help thinking in, and with, the symbols of Chris 
 tianity. But the poet does not take these religious 
 thoughts or concepts in their bare and sinewy 
 outlines; they are "clothed upon" with his 
 own spiritual insight and genius. Through his 
 gracious gift and high endowment they take on 
 forms of beauty, and the truth that would often 
 be rejected because of its literal severity and hard 
 ness is gladly accepted and utilized through the 
 poet s revelation of its inner beauty and spiritual 
 power; thus fulfilling Van Dyke s word that "life 
 is divine when duty is a joy." Mr. Gilder 
 assuredly does not purposely attempt any illustra 
 tion of dogmatic or traditional religion or theology. 
 Quite likely he would dissent from many of our 
 attempts to state, and define, and compass, in 
 formal language, those deep, illimitable, and in 
 some respects indefinable truths of the soul-life. 
 None the less is he influenced by them, and as they 
 are warp and woof of his life and thought he must 
 and he does speak out the thought and conviction 
 of his heart. He could not be true to himself and 
 do otherwise; indeed, this is his expressed motto: 
 
 Forth with thy thought! 
 Soon twill be naught, 
 And thou in thy tomb. 
 Now is air, now is room. 
 Down with false shame; 
 Reck not of fame; 
 
THE SPIRITUAL NOTE 37 
 
 Dread not man s spite; 
 Quench not thy light. 
 This be thy creed, 
 This be thy deed: 
 "Hide not thy heart!" 
 
 If God is, he made 
 Sunshine and shade, 
 Heaven and hell; 
 This we know well. 
 Dost thou believe? 
 Do not deceive ; 
 Scorn not thy faith 
 If tis a wraith, 
 Soon it will fly. 
 Thou, who must die, 
 Hide not thy heart! 
 
 This is my creed; 
 This be my deed : 
 Faith, or a doubt, 
 I shall speak out 
 And hide not my heart. 
 
 Practically all the great and cardinal Christian 
 truths are some way touched by the muse of our 
 poet. One of his books is entitled The New Day. 
 It is a treatment of love, of the power of love to 
 suffuse and spiritualize, mold and influence. In 
 delineating this that Professor Winchester rightly 
 calls the "new day love makes for itself when it 
 rises pure and fulgent in any human life," he shows 
 how love interprets the mystery and pain, the 
 doubt and fear, and all the deeper happenings and 
 feelings of the universe of life. In "And Were 
 That Best" we hear the voice of one who calls for 
 
38 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 a life of ease and rest, void of struggle and pain 
 and strife; to whom is pointed out the worth of 
 the strife and the toil, under the inspiration and 
 guidance of love : 
 
 And were that best, Love, rest serene and deep! 
 
 Gone labor and desire; no arduous steep 
 
 To climb, no songs to sing, no prayers to pray, 
 No help for those who perish by the way, 
 
 No laughter midst our tears, no tears to weep! 
 
 Oh, rather, far, the sorrow-bringing gleam, 
 The living day s long agony and strife! 
 Rather strong love in pain; the waking woe! 
 
 If one would like to see how Christ s love reveals 
 the folly of boasting one s privations and pains 
 let him read "There Is Nothing New Under the 
 Sun." If he would understand the abnegation 
 of a pure and perfect love let him ponder "I Will 
 Be Brave for Thee," with its closing lines, 
 exquisite in their self-abandon: 
 
 If thy one thought of me or hindereth 
 
 Or hurteth thy sweet soul then grant me grace 
 To be forgotten, though that grace be death! 
 
 In "Body and Soul" there is finely and felici 
 tously expressed the true relation of flesh and spirit 
 in a pure and permanent love. As the external 
 symmetry and beauty of a cathedral may attract 
 the eye and attention of the traveler, and draw his 
 steps across the threshold, only to find that after 
 all the cathedral s deep meaning and abiding 
 
THE SPIRITUAL NOTE 39 
 
 power is in its inner grace and symbolism, its 
 light, and music, and spiritual suggestiveness, so 
 the body must be the doorway to the inner shrine 
 and holy of holies: 
 
 Moved by the body s outer majesty 
 I entered in thy silent, sacred shrine; 
 Twos then, all suddenly and unaware, 
 Thou didst reveal, O maiden Love! to me, 
 This beautiful, singing, holy soul of thine. 
 
 If one is inclined to be bitter and hard, to blame 
 God for the mystery, and hurt, and pain, let him 
 read over and over again "The Sower." If he 
 feels it not now, the day will surely come when the 
 concluding refrain will sing its truth and comfort 
 in his aching heart: 
 
 Thou only art wise, 
 God of the earth and skies! 
 And I praise nee, again and again, 
 For the Sower whose name is Pain. 
 
 Where among moderns will you find anything 
 that speaks more beautifully or powerfully of the 
 pervasive, ennobling, purifying, and inspiriting 
 quality of a deep and genuine love than in "My 
 Songs Are All of Thee"?- 
 
 My songs are all of thee. . . 
 
 I think no thought that is not thine, no breath 
 
 Of life I breathe beyond thy sanctity ; 
 
 Thou art the voice that silence uttereth, 
 
 And of all sound thou art the sense. From thee 
 
 The music of my song, and what it saith 
 
 Is but the beat of thy heart, throbbed through me. 
 
40 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 Many men there are, aye, and women too, in 
 many of the ways of life, who can respond to the 
 truth enshrined in these lines. The power of a 
 great and noble love overshadows them, beats in 
 their blood, broods in their moods, and comes to 
 being in their worthy and noble achievements. 
 And how nobly is the purpose and outcome of it all 
 expressed! This love of which the poet sings has 
 its mystery and sorrow, its darkness and pain. It 
 is part and parcel of life, and like life it is neither 
 all sunshine nor all shade, all prosperity nor all 
 adversity, all pleasure nor all pain, but a true 
 composite, full of the changeful experiences that 
 go to the making of human character. Only let 
 it be true, and truly noble, pure, and pervasive; 
 not the gay and fleeting shadow, but the deep 
 and abiding substance and reality: let it be this, 
 and the issue is not doubtful. So our poet-prophet 
 and seer feels and knows : 
 
 Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way 
 That leads from darkness to the perfect day! 
 From darkness and from sorrow of the night 
 To morning that comes singing o er the sea. 
 Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee, 
 Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light! 
 
 In his next book we have the same general theme, 
 but it is now lifted from the earthlies into the heav- 
 enlies. It is become in truth, as our author entitles 
 
THE SPIRITUAL NOTE 41 
 
 it, The Celestial Passion. Without being in the 
 slightest degree theologic or dogmatic, it is the 
 poetic conception and treatment of New Testament 
 love. Here we have enshrined and bodied forth, in 
 lyrics of abiding beauty and truth, the love that the 
 Master had in mind when hesaid : " Thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
 thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first 
 and great commandment. And the second is like 
 unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. " 
 It is the very love that John said was "the fulfill 
 ing of the law," and that he makes synonymous 
 with God, for "God is love." And still again it 
 is the love to which Paul gives the eminency, 
 declaring it superior to faith and hope, and which 
 he glorifies with all high and holy qualities as he 
 joyously proclaims that it "beareth all things, 
 believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth 
 all things. Love never faileth." In these and 
 other lyrics he has touched and interpreted the 
 whole range of spiritual yearning and aspiration. 
 It is not the present purpose further to analyze 
 or estimate Mr. Gilder s poetry, or assign to it its 
 place in the world of verse. That undoubtedly 
 will be done in due time by more worthy and com 
 petent hands. Indeed, it has already been done 
 in part. The task before us is much more limited 
 and simple. Our design is to show how the poet 
 
42 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 has been touched and influenced, consciously or 
 otherwise, by that great body of Christian truth 
 that has been the slow deposit of the centuries; 
 how he has interpreted and used that truth, and 
 applied it to the questions and yearnings, the 
 hopes and fears, the doubt and faith of modern 
 
 life. 
 
 SIN 
 
 The reality of sin, of temptation and a tempter, 
 is implicit in Christian thought. Mr. Gilder s is 
 not the type of mind to dwell on this phase of life 
 with much of dogmatism, detail, or definiteness. 
 That he realizes, however, the shadow of sin, that 
 he understands the power of the tempter, the 
 strength of temptation, and the blight that falls 
 on man s life as he comes under this baleful spell, 
 is clearly evident. His "Temptation" has 
 caught something of the dramatic imagery of 
 Job, the vivid symbolism of Peter s conception of 
 Satan, and the keen insight of Paul that perceived 
 and penetrated Satanic hypocrisy and disguise: 
 
 Not alone in pain and gloom 
 Does the abhorred tempter come; 
 Not in light alone and pleasure 
 Proffers he the poisoned measure. 
 When the soul doth rise 
 Nearest to its native skies, 
 There the exalted spirit finds 
 Borne upon the heavenly winds 
 Satan, in an angel s guise, 
 With voice divine and innocent eyes. 
 
SIN 43 
 
 In "The Prisoner s Thought " he has inter 
 preted for us that subtle interplay of high and low, 
 of vice and virtue, of moral struggle with its alter 
 nations of failure and success, that has been the 
 theme and well-nigh the despair of many earnest, 
 deep-souled men. Amiel realized it when he 
 wrote, "The germs of all things are in every 
 heart, and the greatest criminals, as well as the 
 greatest heroes, are but different modes of 
 ourselves." Browning touched it in "Rabbi 
 Ben Ezra" when he showed the discrepancy 
 between thought and deed, between desire and 
 achievement; and Paul portrayed it in his letter 
 to the Romans, rinding hope and deliverance in 
 Christ alone. Gilder s Prisoner illustrates this 
 struggle and moral conflict the power of sin and 
 the force of holiness striving for the mastery. One 
 moment he cries: 
 
 Here let me rot then there s a taste one has 
 
 For just the best of all things, even of sin. 
 
 He s a poor devil who in deepest hell 
 
 Knows no keen relish for the worst that is, 
 
 The very acme of in tensest pain, 
 
 Nor smacks charred lips at thoughts of some dear crime 
 
 The sweetest, deadliest, damnablest of all. 
 
 Sometimes I hug that hellish happiness; 
 
 And then a loathing falls upon my soul 
 
 For what I was, and am, and still must be. 
 
 The mood changes; the better vision rises in his 
 eyes; the higher yearning controls and asserts itself: 
 
44 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 But suddenly my soul is pure as yours ; 
 My thoughts as clean ; my spirit is as free 
 As any man s, or any purest woman s. 
 
 Why, this my soul has thoughts that strike 
 Into the very heights and depths of Heaven. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the man thus troubled 
 and tossed, rinding himself by turns weak and 
 strong, alternately plunged into depths of despair 
 and lifted on the hilltops of hope, speculates 
 whether or not, sometime, here or hereafter, 
 
 The thinking part of us we name the soul 
 
 Can ever get away from its old self; 
 
 Can wash the earth all off from it, that so 
 
 It really will be, what I sometimes seem 
 
 As sinless as a little child at birth, 
 
 With all a woman s love for all things pure, 
 
 And all a grown man s strength to do the right? 
 
 The power of love to recover a man who has 
 been caught in the mesh and is bewildered and 
 lost in the maze of sin is indicated in "A Soul 
 Lost, and Found." The man of genius and 
 strength is moving along the high planes of life and 
 worthy work. His friends follow his achievements 
 with admiration and joy. To him "Life was love, 
 life was art." But, alas! he slips and falls: 
 
 Now see the mire 
 
 Soil him and swallow! 
 
 Heaven ! what guerdon 
 
 Worth such a cost! 
 
 Love, art, life, lost, all lost. 
 
SIN 45 
 
 Is there any hope of restoration, any chance for 
 one who has sinned so grievously ? Yes. It is 
 the story of the Prodigal lifted into life and hope 
 by the power of love: 
 
 Down to the pallid 
 
 Figure of death 
 
 Love s face is pressing; 
 
 Behold now, a moving, 
 
 A flutter of life! 
 
 Forth from the starkness, 
 
 Horror, and slime, 
 
 See, he doth climb. 
 
 With himself is the strife; 
 
 Back to the loving 
 
 From mire and the darkness, 
 
 Back to the sun! 
 
 He has fought he has won. 
 
 Two of his little poems breathe, on this general 
 theme, the very sentiment of the Sermon on the 
 Mount. In one of them, "Scorn," we see the pity 
 and forbearance of the Master with the sudden, 
 outflashing sin of passion, and his severity and 
 scorn for the sin of nice and selfish calculation 
 for the man whose heart is bitter and black but 
 who always manages to keep just outside the 
 clutches of law, civil or religious: 
 
 Who are the men that good men most despise? 
 
 Not they who, ill begot and spawned in shame, 
 Riot and rob, or rot before men s eyes, 
 
 Who basely live, and dying leave no name. 
 
46 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 He, only, is the despicable one 
 Who lightly sells his honor as a shield 
 
 For fawning knaves, to hide them from the sun; 
 Too nice for crime, yet, coward, he doth yield 
 
 For crime a shelter. Swift to Paradise 
 
 The contrite thief, not Judas with his price! 
 
 In the other, "On a Portrait of Servetus," we 
 are reminded that the spirit of hatred and oppo 
 sition, the persecution for righteousness sake that 
 Jesus foresaw, still exists, yea, and will exist. 
 The form changes, the spirit survives: 
 
 Servetus! that which slew thee lives to-day, 
 Though in new forms it taints our modern air; 
 
 Still in heaven s name the deeds of hell are done; 
 
 Still on the highroad, neath the noonday sun, 
 The fires of hate are lit for them who dare 
 
 Follow their Lord along the untrodden way. 
 
 SPIRIT AND LIFE 
 
 One of the fundamentals of our faith is that 
 Christianity is a matter of the inner life and spirit. 
 "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." 
 The form is a matter of indifference; the motive 
 and purpose is the essence. Ages since, the 
 writer of Proverbs saw this and counseled, " Keep 
 thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the 
 issues of life. " And this also is one of the deep 
 est teachings of Jesus a teaching that he illus 
 trated with lip and life. "As a man thinketh in 
 his heart, so is he," and that richest of the Beati 
 tudes, " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall 
 
SPIRIT AND LIFE 47 
 
 see God," are proof of this. In three or four 
 exquisite lyrics Mr. Gilder shows how deeply this 
 truth has touched his thought. And one who 
 knows him feels sure that with him it is not merely 
 a matter of the intellect, but a principle of his 
 thinking and living. We note the influence of this 
 truth in "Holy Land." The poet is there, at 
 least in spirit. He conceives and constructs 
 for himself the whole scene the Asian country, 
 the Judean hills, the Galilean plains, mountain, 
 river, sun and sea and moon all so perfectly 
 known and familiar to the Man of Nazareth, "who 
 did no sin, neither was any guile found in his 
 mouth": 
 
 The air we breathe, he breathed the very air 
 That took the mold and music of his high 
 
 And Godlike speech. Since then shall mortal dare 
 With base thought front the ever-sacred sky 
 
 Soil with foul deed the ground whereon he laid 
 
 In holy death his pale, immortal head! 
 
 And in the following simple lines we see again 
 the deep desire for life that shall be true to the 
 high trust given, without soil, or stain, or blemish : 
 
 When to sleep I must 
 
 Where my fathers sleep; 
 When fulfilled the trust, 
 
 And the mourners weep; 
 When, though free from rust, 
 
 Sword hath lost its worth 
 
 Let me bring to earth 
 No dishonored dust. 
 
48 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 The purity for which our poet pleads is a purity 
 that controls the mind and governs its output 
 in speech. As the crystal waters of a purling 
 brook speak of a pure and bountiful source, so 
 the words and images of a man suggest the 
 character of his "chamber of imagery." Our 
 author s delight in mental cleanness, in its in 
 fluence and value to the world, is evident when 
 he sings: 
 
 Thy mind is like a crystal brook 
 
 Wherein clean creatures live at ease, 
 
 In sun-bright waves or shady nook. 
 
 Birds sing above it, 
 
 The warm-breathed cattle love it, 
 It doth sweet childhood please. 
 
 Accursed be he by whom it were undone, 
 
 Or thing or thought whose presence 
 The birds and beasts would loathly shun, 
 Would make its crystal waters foully run, 
 And drive sweet childhood from its pleasance. 
 
 As one reads this he catches through the music 
 of the lines the refrain of the Master s teaching: 
 "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones 
 which believe in me, it were better for him that a 
 millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he 
 were drowned in the depth of the sea." But best 
 of all these lyrics of purity is the one we have in 
 A Week s Calendar. It is the third in the Cal 
 endar, and is titled " Keep Pure Thy Soul. " One 
 
THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING 49 
 
 is wise who commits to memory this perfect gem 
 and repeats it as he begins the work of each day. 
 The very heart of the New Testament teaching 
 is here. As the pure soul is the fit and the only 
 organ for the vision of the Eternal, so it is the 
 medium through which one can get, and alone 
 can get, the deep delight, the perfect joy, the 
 rich meaning of earth and time, of heaven and 
 eternity : 
 
 Keep pure thy soul! 
 
 Then shalt thou take the whole 
 
 Of delight; 
 
 Then, without a pang, 
 
 Thine shall be all of beauty whereof the poet sang 
 
 The perfume, and the pageant, the melody, the mirth 
 
 Of the golden day and the starry night; 
 
 Of heaven, and of earth. 
 
 Oh, keep pure thy soul! 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING 
 
 One of the teachings of Christianity touches the 
 mystery and meaning of suffering and pain. Per 
 haps the classic note of Christian thought is heard 
 in the passage in Hebrews, "Now no chastening 
 for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous : 
 nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable 
 fruit of righteousness unto them which are exer 
 cised thereby/ And Paul is an illustrator of the 
 enriched influence and the enlarged efficiency of 
 one who allows himself to be rightly instructed, 
 
 MTY 
 
50 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 exercised, disciplined, and developed by the min 
 istry of pain. That all this seemingly dark and 
 bitter side of life is an essential part of God s 
 educative process cannot be well doubted by one 
 who has studied the revelation of God in literature 
 and in life. "It pleased God to make the Cap 
 tain of our Salvation perfect through sufferings." 
 He could not otherwise be perfected. M. Charles 
 Wagner truly says that a suffering God is a neces 
 sity. Otherwise man would be greater and nobler 
 than God. It is only a shallow and meager view 
 of life that ignores pain, and suffering, and sorrow. 
 This was the error of much pagan philosophy and 
 religion, and is the error underlying a pseudo-faith 
 to-day, masquerading under the guise of a hyphen 
 ated name, and carefully devised to deceive the 
 unwary. The contrast between this shallowness 
 and self-deception on the one hand, and the clear 
 and resolute vision of Christianity on the other, is 
 suggested by Mr. Gilder in "Two Worlds." In 
 the one we see the type that brushes aside all save 
 ease and pleasure, and external peace and beauty; 
 in the other, the type that longs for peace and 
 beauty but will not be content save as these are 
 grounded in eternal foundations will not waive or 
 blink any of life s realities, but with all the strength 
 and wisdom of an awakened soul will face the 
 problem, enter the thick darkness, and through 
 
THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING 51 
 
 turmoil, and strife, and pain, and blood, fight its 
 way at last to abiding peace: 
 
 I. THE VENUS OF MILO 
 
 Grace, majesty, and the calm bliss of life; 
 
 No conscious war twixt human will and duty; 
 Here breathes, forever free from pain and strife, 
 
 The old, untroubled pagan world of beauty. 
 
 II. MICHAEL ANGELO S SLAVE 
 
 Of life, of death the mystery and woe, 
 
 Witness in this mute, carven stone the whole. 
 
 That suffering smile were never fashioned so 
 Before the world had wakened to a soul. 
 
 The same truth is taught in "The Gift. " Here 
 Life comes and invites one to a home of pleasure 
 rich in all priceless and pleasurable things. He 
 hurries on with eager feet, only to be deeply dis 
 appointed in the earlier stages of the way, but 
 abundantly rejoiced and rewarded at the end: 
 
 I entered the oaken door; 
 
 Within, no ray of light; 
 I saw no golden store, 
 
 My heart stood still with fright; 
 To curse Life was I fain; 
 Then one unseen before 
 Laid in my own her hand, 
 And said: "Come thou and know 
 This is the House of Woe; 
 I am Life s sister, Pain." 
 
 Through many a breathless way, 
 
 In dark, on dizzying height, 
 She led me through the day 
 
 And into the dreadful night. 
 
52 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 My soul was sore distressed 
 And wildly I longed for rest; 
 Till a chamber met my sight, 
 Far off, and hid, and still, 
 With diamonds all bedight 
 And every precious thing; 
 Not even a god might will 
 More beauty there to bring. 
 
 In what seems to me one of the choicest and 
 most suggestive of his shorter poems, "Life Is the 
 Cost," there is emphasized, after the manner of the 
 Impressionists, the truth that all worthy achieve 
 ment is the outcome of pain and sacrifice and loss: 
 
 Life is the cost. 
 Behold yon tower, 
 That heavenward lifts 
 To the cloudy drifts 
 Like a flame, like a flower! 
 What lightness, what grace, 
 What a dream of power! 
 One last endeavor 
 One stone to place 
 And it stands forever. 
 
 A Blip, a fall; 
 
 A cry, a call; 
 
 Turn away, all s done. 
 
 Stands the tower in the sun 
 
 Forever and a day. 
 
 On the pavement below 
 
 The crimson stain 
 
 Will be worn away 
 
 In the ebb and flow; 
 
 The tower will remain. 
 
 Life is the cost. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING 53 
 
 Who that reads it but is reminded of the heroes 
 and heroines on "fame s eternal beadroll worthy 
 to be fyled"; the great army of the sacrificial ones 
 who have given themselves for the upbuilding of 
 the world and the uplifting of their fellows ? And 
 the Christian recalls the central fact of his faith, 
 the attractive power of the cross and Him of whom 
 it was said, "He saved others, himself he cannot 
 save." But the fullest treatment of this theme is 
 found in "Non Sine Dolore. " It is too long to 
 quote, and yet it cannot be overlooked in the con 
 sideration of this part of our subject. Our author 
 pushes the truth of the purifying, ennobling, bliss- 
 imparting mission of pain to its furthest limit; 
 implying in the daring reach of his thought that it 
 is even an element in the enrichment and progress 
 of the eternal life! And since God must needs be a 
 suffering God, one who has felt the woe and weight 
 of the world, why may it not be so still ? Who will 
 dare deny that the elements that make for char 
 acter growth here may not also, at least possibly, 
 make for like growth there ? 
 
 Soul of man, oh, be thou bold, 
 And to the brink of thought draw near, behold! 
 Where, on the earth s green sod, 
 Where, where in all the universe of God, 
 Hath strife forever ceased? 
 
 No Life without a pang! It were not Life, 
 If ended were the strife 
 
54 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 Man were not man, nor God were truly God! 
 
 See from the sod 
 
 The lark thrill skyward in an arrow of song: 
 Even so from pain and wrong 
 Upsprings the exultant spirit, wild and free. 
 He knows not all the joy of liberty 
 Who never yet was crushed neath heavy woe. 
 
 No passing burden is our earthly sorrow 
 That shall depart in some mysterious morrow. 
 Tis His one universe where er we are 
 One changeless law from sun to viewless star. 
 Were sorrow evil here, evil it were forever, 
 Beyond the scope and help of our most keen endeavor. 
 
 God doth not dote, 
 His everlasting purpose shall not fail. 
 Here where our ears are weary with the wail 
 And weeping of the sufferers ; there where the Pleiads float- 
 Here, there, forever, pain most dread and dire 
 Doth bring the intensest bliss, the dearest and most sure. 
 Tis not from Life aside, it doth endure 
 Deep in the secret heart of all existence. 
 It is the inward fire, 
 The heavenly urge, and the divine insistence. 
 
 Uplift thine eyes, O Questioner, from the sod! 
 It were no longer Life, 
 If ended were the strife; 
 Man were not man, God were not truly God. 
 
 GOD IN THE WORLD 
 
 The Divine Immanence, the conscious sense 
 and recognition of God as present, interested, and 
 active in the world life, is a truth that finds expres 
 sion in the work of Mr. Gilder. Perhaps the 
 most elaborate and purposeful depiction of this 
 is found in "Recognition." Here we find the 
 
GOD IN THE WORLD 55 
 
 poet s conception and unfolding of the creation 
 story the existent God; the forthcoming from him 
 of all forms of matter and life in ever-developing 
 types of power and knowledge, till the summit is 
 reached in One who is able to know and have kin 
 ship with the Creator: 
 
 Then other forms more fine 
 Streamed ceaseless on my sight, until at last, 
 Rising and turning its slow gaze about 
 Across the abysmal void, the mighty child 
 Of the supreme, divine Omnipotence 
 Creation, born of God, by Him begot, 
 Conscious in MAN, no longer blind and dumb, 
 Beheld and knew its father and its God. 
 
 The impossibility of fitting God into our little 
 forms, of concluding and imprisoning him in our 
 definitions, of keeping him within the limits of one 
 sole faith, of making him altogether such a one 
 as ourselves all this is well set forth in a stanza 
 in one of his hymns : 
 
 In myriad forms, by myriad names, 
 Men seek to bind and mold thee; 
 But thou dost melt, like wax in flames, 
 The cords that would enfold thee. 
 Who madest life and light, 
 Bnng st morning after night, 
 Who all things did st create 
 No majesty, nor state, 
 Nor word, nor world can hold thee! 
 
 How many Christians there are who seem to put 
 the best things of their faith into the far future; 
 who are ever hoping, and praying, and waiting for 
 
56 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 a better day, forgetful of the great truth that God 
 is a Spirit, able to realize himself in conscious expe 
 rience now as at any time. Nothing is clearer in 
 the gospels than Jesus sense of the nearness of God 
 and consciousness of oneness with him. The possi 
 bility of this as an experience for men of to-day is a 
 teaching of Jesus that has been caught by this poet: 
 
 Heardst thou these wanderers reasoning of a time 
 When men more near the Eternal One shall climb? 
 How like the newborn child, who cannot tell 
 A mother s arm that wraps it warm and well! 
 Leaves of His rose ; drops in His sea that flow 
 Are they, alas, so blind they may not know 
 Here, in this breathing world of joy and fear, 
 They can no nearer get to God than here. 
 
 That the world of nature is a revelation of God, 
 a medium of the Divine utterance, is as evident to 
 Mr. Gilder as to the psalmist. Indeed, the echo 
 of the nineteenth psalm is most distinctly heard 
 in "Day unto Day Uttereth Speech." Though 
 our eyes are so dim, our ears so dull, our minds so 
 heavy, that we often miss the voice and teaching of 
 God in the ordinary sights and sounds of day and 
 night, yet such are the suggestions of sunrise and 
 sunset that here at least we see and hear and learn: 
 
 But when the day doth close there is one word 
 That s writ amid the sunset s golden embers; 
 
 And one at morn; by them our hearts are stirred: 
 Splendor of Dawn, and Evening that remembers; 
 
 These are the rhymes of God; thus, line on line, 
 
 Our souls are moved to thoughts that are divine. 
 
GOD IN THE WORLD 57 
 
 Three little poems give us our author s sense of 
 the worth of worship and devotion. The living, 
 ever-present God is worthy of our adoration. It is 
 evident that one who could so write must himself 
 have been deeply influenced by the Christian prac 
 tice of daily prayer and weekly worship. The 
 value of these Christian institutions could be so 
 felicitously expressed only by one who has had 
 experience of that value : 
 
 a. TO REST FROM WEARY WORK 
 
 To rest from weary work one day of seven ; 
 
 One day to turn our backs upon the world, 
 Its soil wash from us, and strive on to Heaven 
 
 Whereto we daily climb, but quick are hurled 
 Down to the pit of human pride and sin. 
 
 Help me, ye powers celestial! to come nigh; 
 Ah, let me catch one little glimpse within 
 
 The heavenly city, lest my spirit die. 
 These be my guides, my messengers, my friends: 
 
 Books of wise poets; the musician s art; 
 The ocean whose deep music never ends; 
 
 The silence of the forest s shadowy heart; 
 And, too, the brooding organ s solemn blare, 
 And kneeling multitudes low-murmuring prayer. 
 
 b. O GLORIOUS SABBATH SUN 
 
 O glorious Sabbath sun, thou art 
 A balm and blessing to my heart; 
 Dark sorrow flies, and in thy shine 
 Bursts o er the world a flood divine. 
 
 So may the light beyond the skies 
 Illume and bless my inward eyes, 
 That each new day may bring to me 
 The splendor of eternity 
 
58 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 C. MORNING AND NIGHT 
 
 The mountain that the morn doth kiss 
 Glad greets its shining neighbor; 
 
 Lord! heed the homage of our bliss, 
 The incense of our labor. 
 
 Now the long shadows eastward creep, 
 
 The golden sun is setting; 
 Take, Lord! the worship of our sleep, 
 
 The praise of our forgetting. 
 
 FAITH 
 
 Faith is surely a foundation principle in Chris 
 tianity. Too often, however, the emphasis has 
 been misplaced. Too much it has been insisted 
 that we must accept and believe the dogmas, and 
 creeds, and theologies of the Fathers; that, too, 
 not specially because they were true, but because 
 the Fathers believed them true. Not infrequently 
 men who believed in God, and in Christ, and in 
 the Holy Spirit have been condemned and branded 
 as heretics because, in truth, they did not believe 
 some other man s belief in or about God and 
 Christ and the Holy Spirit. Whittier exposed 
 the fallacy of this sort of faith when he wrote: 
 
 I know how well the fathers taught, 
 What work the later schoolmen wrought; 
 I reverence old-time faith and men, 
 But God is near us now as then ; 
 His force of love is still unspent, 
 His hate of sin as immanent; 
 And still the measure of our needs 
 Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 
FAITH 59 
 
 The faith that Christianity demands is faith in 
 the realities; faith, for example, in God vital, 
 active, and fatherly, not in some man s explana 
 tion or dogmatism about these things; faith, again, 
 in the atonement, not in some man s theory of that 
 elemental and unshakable fact; faith in the pres 
 ence and inspirational power of the Spirit to guide 
 and counsel, to comfort, warn, and instruct; not 
 faith in some man s philosophical conception of the 
 relation of the Spirit to the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 Now, that Richard Watson Gilder might not be 
 able to subscribe some of the creeds of Christen 
 dom is probably true. It is quite possible that if 
 put on the rack of categorical questioning he 
 would not satisfy the critical judgment of some 
 synods or conferences. And this is not said in 
 depreciation of the requirements of synod, or con 
 ference, or consistory. These have their rightful 
 function, and the man who seeks such fellowship 
 should be able to shape his belief in a form of 
 expression conformable to the general consensus 
 of the body with which he would unite. Mr. 
 Gilder is no acceptor of a secondhand faith. He 
 cannot take the creeds, and beliefs, and forms of 
 other men and other days, and make them his own, 
 without at least deep and careful investigation. 
 Before he can say, "I believe," the belief confessed 
 must first of all compel his judgment and constrain 
 
60 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 his heart. This phase of the truth he has set 
 forth vividly in "Credo": 
 
 How easily my neighbor chants his creed, 
 
 Kneeling beside me in the House of God. 
 
 His "I believe" he chants, and "I believe," 
 
 With cheerful iteration and consent 
 
 Watching meantime the white, slow sunbeam move 
 
 Across the aisle, or listening to the bird 
 
 Whose free, wild song sounds through the open door. 
 
 Thou God supreme I too, I too, believe! 
 But oh! forgive if this one human word, 
 Binding the deep and breathless thought of thee 
 And my own conscience with an iron band, 
 Stick in my throat. I cannot say it, thus 
 This "I believe" that doth thyself obscure; 
 This rod to smite ; this barrier ; this blot 
 On thy most unimaginable face 
 And soul of majesty. 
 
 Tis not man s faith 
 
 In thee that he proclaims in echoed phrase, 
 But faith in man ; faith not in thine own Christ, 
 But in another man s dim thought of him. 
 
 But that Mr. Gilder has a firm and true faith 
 in the essential elements of our general Christianity 
 cannot well be doubted by any careful and sym 
 pathetic student of his writings. Perhaps the 
 completest expression of his attitude, of the tem 
 per of his mind, and of the genuineness and 
 fearlessness of his faith, is found in the poem " In 
 Palestine": 
 
FAITH 61 
 
 Ah no! that sacred land, 
 
 Where fell the wearied feet of the lone Christ, 
 
 Robs not the soul of faith. I shall set down 
 
 The thought was in my heart. If that hath lost 
 
 Aught of its child-belief, twas long ago, 
 
 Not there in Palestine; and if twere lost, 
 
 He were a coward who should fear to lose 
 
 A blind, hereditary, thoughtless faith, 
 
 Comfort of fearful minds, a straw to catch at 
 
 On the deep-gulfed and tempest-driven sea. 
 
 Full well I know how shallow spirits lack 
 The essence, flinging from them but the form; 
 I have seen souls lead barren lives and cursed, 
 Bereft of light, and all the grace of life, 
 Because for them the inner truth was lost 
 In the frail symbol hated, shattered, spurned. 
 
 But faith that lives forever is not bound 
 To any outward semblance, any scheme 
 Fine-wrought of human wonder, or self-love, 
 Or the base fear of never-ending pain. 
 True faith doth face the blackness of despair, 
 Blank faithlessness itself; bravely it holds 
 To duty unrewarded and unshared; 
 It loves where all is loveless; it endures 
 In the long passion of the soul for God. 
 
 Lest anyone should think this man a careless 
 and flippant iconoclast, casting aside things old 
 and reverend without due consideration, let me 
 call attention to the lines "Despise Not Thou." 
 Here we see how the poet recognizes and holds to 
 the good and true in the ancient forms and creeds. 
 A thing is not always true because it is new, nor 
 worthless because it comes freighted with the 
 fragrance and faith of the past. Without doubt 
 
62 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 the memory of his father s faith, and of the noble 
 and useful life that was the rich fruitage of that 
 faith, has steadied and sobered him, and has kept 
 him grounded in the fundamentals the while he 
 has been free and open to the change of form 
 necessitated by the growth of human thought and 
 experience: 
 
 Despise not them thy father s ancient creed; 
 
 Of his pure life it was the golden thread 
 Whereon bright days were gathered, bead by bead, 
 
 Till death laid low that dear and reverend head. 
 From olden faith how many a glorious deed 
 
 Hath lit the world; its blood-stained banner led 
 The martyrs heavenward ; yea, it was the seed 
 
 Of knowledge, whence our modern freedom spread. 
 Not always has man s credo proved a snare 
 
 But a deliverance, a sign, a flame 
 To purify the dense and pestilent air, 
 
 Writing on pitiless heavens one pitying name; 
 And neath the shadow of the dread eclipse 
 It shines on dying eyes and pallid lips. 
 
 CHRIST 
 
 Christianity concretes itself in Christ. He is the 
 Father s complete and final unveiling. Thought 
 about him is definitive, attitude toward him is 
 final. As Whittier says: 
 
 Alone, O Love ineffable! 
 
 Thy saving name is given; 
 To turn aside from thee is hell, 
 
 To walk with thee is heaven 1 
 
 Now, the influence of Christ is probably the 
 most evident thing in the writings of this poet. In 
 
CHRIST 63 
 
 some way he has touched practically all the vital 
 facts in his life, and with a depth of feeling and an 
 intensity of passion that reveal his personal atti 
 tude. His faith in the "Christ of Judea" never 
 falters or wavers. He notes the varying views of 
 men concerning the Man of Galilee; and however 
 he is conceived, whether as Divine, or human, or 
 Divine-human, he is still, in our poet s thought, 
 "the one altogether lovely and the chiefest among 
 ten thousand." Following him is the only ra 
 tional attitude and purpose of the life; fealty 
 and devotion to him the supremest wisdom, 
 and the way into the experience of the highest 
 good. Nearly all the salient features of the 
 Christ life have some way been touched and de 
 picted by his ever-brooding thought and always- 
 busy pen: 
 
 What babe newborn is this that in a manger cries? 
 Near on her lowly bed his happy mother lies. 
 O, see, the air is shaken with white and heavenly wings 
 This is the Lord of all the earth, this is the King of kings ! 
 
 Such incidents as the driving out of the money 
 changers from the temple, and the supper at 
 Emmaus, with their spiritual suggestions, hold his 
 thought and compel embodiment in enduring 
 verse. The atoning power of sacrifice and death 
 is suggested in the lines previously quoted, "Life 
 Is the Cost," while in a little verse entitled "Cost" 
 
64 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 the power and influence of Christ s sacrifice is 
 vividly unfolded: 
 
 Because Heaven s cost is Hell, and perfect joy 
 Hurts as hurts sorrow; and because we win 
 Some boon of grace with the dread cost of sin, 
 
 Or suffering born of sin; because the alloy 
 
 Of blood but makes the bliss of victory brighter; 
 Because true worth hath surest proof herein, 
 That it should be reproached, and called akin 
 
 To evil things black making white the whiter; 
 
 Because no cost seems great near this that He 
 Should pay the ransom wherewith we were priced ; 
 
 And none could name a darker infamy 
 Than that a God was spit upon, enticed 
 
 By those he came to save, to the accursed tree, 
 For this I know that Christ indeed is Christ. 
 
 In "Easter" we have a specific treatment of 
 the Resurrection, while in two contrasted poems, 
 "Egypt" and "Syria," we have an illustration 
 of the vitalizing quality of the risen Christ set 
 over against the dull and hopeless faith of pagan 
 ism. In Egypt the mighty monuments, the empty 
 tombs, the elaborate housings of the dead, all the 
 honor paid to and all the care and thought lav 
 ished upon the dead, fill our poet with the sense 
 of the reality, the pervasiveness, and the power 
 of Death: 
 
 Not here the Dead, but Death: alone, supreme; 
 In Egypt death was real life, a winged dream. 
 
 In Syria the reverse is true; the empty tomb, 
 the very lack of monuments and memorials, the 
 
CHRIST 65 
 
 absence of tribute to the power of death, all these 
 suggest that death is only a phase of life : 
 
 I thought in Syria, Life was more than Death. 
 
 A tomb there was forsaken of its dead, 
 
 But Death filled not the place ; here with bowed head 
 
 Worships the world forever at the tread 
 Of one who lived, who liveth, and shall live, 
 
 Whose grave is but a footstep on the sod ; 
 
 Men kiss the ground where living feet have trod. 
 Here not to Death, but Life, they worship give. 
 
 August is Death, but this one tomb is rife 
 
 With a more mighty presence ; it is Life. 
 
 If our author believes in the resurrection of the 
 body, it is hardly of the body as we know it. 
 Rather, I think, he is touched and influenced by 
 that suggestive and shadowy phrase of Paul s, 
 "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual 
 body. " And it is this latter that Mr. Gilder seems 
 to believe shall come forth to the light and glory 
 of the eternal day. In his little volume, In Pales 
 tine, two poems, "Resurrection" and "As Soars 
 the Eagle," seem fairly to establish this view. 
 In a sense they are complementary. In the first 
 noted, the disembodied spirit comes back to the 
 body only to find itself limited, cabined, cribbed, 
 and hampered: 
 
 Overwhelmed was my soul with its shackles; I grieved, I 
 
 lamented 
 As a prisoner dragged back to his cell, as an eagle recaptured. 
 
 In the second, the released and disembodied 
 spirit fares forth into the eternal morning with 
 
66 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 the joy and freedom of the eagle, soaring in the 
 sun s eye : 
 
 Child of Him, the untrembling One, 
 Oh, prove thee worthy of thy birth! 
 
 Let no ill betray thee! 
 Let no death dismay thee! 
 
 The eagle seeks the sky, 
 
 Nor fears the infinite light; 
 
 Thus, soul of mine, escape the night 
 
 And gainst the morning fly ! 
 
 We come now to a series of poems in "The 
 Celestial Passion," in "Lyrics," and elsewhere in 
 his writings that show the surpassing influence 
 on Mr. Gilder s thought of the thought and life of 
 Christ. If we may judge by his writings, the 
 Christ is the commanding figure in our poet s 
 spiritual vision. His faith is faith in Christ; his 
 hope is hope in Christ; his life is life in Christ. And 
 this Christ is not merely temporal and transient, 
 the Christ of a day or an age or a people; he is for 
 all ages and all people. Without doubt Mr. 
 Gilder would subscribe Principal Shairp s mag 
 nificent sonnet: 
 
 Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter, 
 Churches change, forms perish, systems go, 
 
 But our human needs they will not alter, 
 Christ no after age shall e er outgrow. 
 
 Yea, Amen I O changeless One. Thou only 
 
 Art life s guide and spiritual goal, 
 Thou the light across the dark vale lonely, 
 
 Thou the eternal haven of the soul. 
 
CHRIST 67 
 
 In "The Passing of Christ" Mr. Gilder con 
 siders the phase of modern thought that would 
 displace and dethrone Christ because of the new 
 discoveries in the physical realm and the new 
 interpretations in the intellectual realm. Because 
 of these it is claimed that the place and power of 
 Christ is waning in human affairs. The attitude 
 of the objector and detractor is vividly portrayed 
 in thought and language that will repay care 
 ful study. Indeed, the whole poem should be 
 read and reread. We quote the poet s reply 
 to the objections and questions that have been 
 raised 
 
 Ah no! If the Christ you mean 
 
 Shall pass from this time, this scene, 
 
 These hearts, these lives of ours, 
 
 Tis but as the summer flowers 
 
 Pass, but return again, 
 
 To gladden a world of men. 
 
 For he the only, the true 
 
 In each age, in each waiting heart, 
 Leaps into life anew; 
 
 Though he pass, he shall not depart. 
 
 Behold him now where he comes! 
 
 Not the Christ of our subtile creeds, 
 But the lord of our hearts, of our homes, 
 
 Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs; 
 The brother of want and blame, 
 
 The lover of women and men, 
 With a love that puts to shame 
 
 All passions of mortal ken; 
 
68 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 Ah no, thou life of the heart, 
 Never shalt thou depart! 
 Not till the leaven of God 
 Shall lighten each human clod; 
 Not till the world shall climb 
 To thy height serene, sublime, 
 Shall the Christ who enters our door 
 Pass to return no more. 
 
 If one would know the poet s personal thought 
 and feeling for Christ he must read "Credo." 
 While one reads it is well to remember that Mr. 
 Gilder does not write mechanically, nor always 
 for publication. As has been elsewhere said, 
 poetry is the manner in which he expresses his 
 thoughts and convictions. "Credo" was thus 
 written. Indeed, for considerable time it was 
 withheld from publication as being something 
 too intimate and personal for the public eye. 
 We may well be thankful that these scruples were 
 overcome, and that the poem is now a public 
 possession. It is a fit vehicle for the expression 
 of many a man s faith and desire: 
 
 Christ of Judea, look thou in my heart! 
 Do I not love thee, look to thee, in thee 
 Alone have faith of all the sons of men 
 Faith deepening with the weight and woe of years. 
 
 Pure soul and tenderest of all that came 
 Into this world of sorrow, hear my prayer: 
 
 Lead me, yea, lead me deeper into life, 
 
 This suffering, human life wherein thou liv st 
 
 And breathest still, and hold st thy way divine. 
 
CHRIST 69 
 
 Tis here, O pitying Christ, where thee I seek, 
 Here where the strife is fiercest; where the sun 
 Beats down upon the highway thronged with men, 
 And in the raging mart. Oh! deeper lead 
 My soul into the living world of souls 
 Where thou dost move. 
 
 But lead me, Man Divine, 
 Where er thou will st, only that I may find 
 At the long journey s end thy image there, 
 And grow more like to it. 
 
 He hears the wordy conflict concerning the 
 nature of Christ, human or divine; but the "strife 
 of tongues" does not disturb the serenity or the 
 security of his faith. Well he knows that the 
 Christ life is the one supreme and supremely per 
 fect type and example, and that the life lived in 
 unfaltering obedience and fealty and love cannot 
 fail of the everlasting habitations: 
 
 But were he man, 
 
 And death ends all; then was that tortured death 
 On Calvary a thing to make the pulse 
 Of memory quail and stop. 
 
 The blackest thought 
 
 The human brain may harbor comes that way. 
 Face that, face all, yet lose not hope nor heart! 
 One perfect moment in the life of love, 
 One deed wherein the soul unselfed gleams forth, 
 These can outmatch all ill, all doubt, all fear, 
 And through the encompassing burden of the world 
 Burn swift the spirit s pathway to its God. 
 
 And the same firm and sure purpose to accept 
 and follow Christ whatever may be the philosophic 
 
;o RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 interpretation or the intellectual belief about him 
 is voiced in what is perhaps the best known of 
 these lyrics : 
 
 If Jesus Christ is a man, 
 
 And only a man, I say 
 That of all mankind I cleave to him, 
 
 And to him will I cleave alway. 
 
 If Jesus Christ is a God, 
 
 And the only God, I swear 
 I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
 
 The earth, the sea, and the air! 
 
 The Song of a Heathen. 
 
 If a "Heathen," with his pagan traditions, 
 with his imperfect knowledge, can make such a 
 determination as that, what ought to be the pur 
 pose and achievement of those of us who believe 
 that Peter uttered the fundamental and the final 
 confession when he said, "Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of the living God"! 
 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 The last section of "The Celestial Passion" 
 deals with Job s question the question of every 
 earnest and thoughtful soul: "If a man die, shall 
 he live again?" And in dealing with this ques 
 tion the Christian truth of personal immortality 
 is most clearly and beautifully emphasized. I 
 hardly know where one would find in any single 
 poet a better body of verse dealing with this great 
 truth than can be found in these little volumes of 
 
IMMORTALITY 71 
 
 Mr. Gilder s. Take the lyric with which this 
 special series begins; how chaste and noble and 
 inspiring it is in every line! 
 
 Three messengers to me from heaven came 
 
 And said: "There is a deathless human soul; 
 It is not lost, as is the fiery flame 
 
 That dies into the undistinguished whole. 
 Ah, no; it separate is, distinct as God 
 
 Nor any more than He can it be killed ; 
 Then fearless give thy body to the clod, 
 
 For naught can quench the light that once it filled!" 
 
 Three messengers the first was human LOVE; 
 
 The second voice came crying in the night 
 With strange and awful music from above ; 
 
 None who have heard that voice forget it quite ; 
 BIRTH is it named; the third, O, turn not pale! 
 Twas DEATH to the undying soul cried, Hail! 
 
 The Soul. 
 
 It is not a vague, general, diffused, and imper 
 sonal immortality that he believes in, but a life 
 personal, personally recognizable, and recognizing 
 its own identity: 
 
 Nor shall they in vast nature be undone 
 
 And lost in general life. Each separate heart 
 Shall live, and find its own, and never die. 
 
 And so to him, as indeed to the prophets and 
 seers of every age, death is not an end, it is only 
 a beginning; it is not bondage, but freedom; it is 
 not loneliness, but congenial companionship; it is 
 not cessation of effort, but increased and better 
 
72 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 activity. He never moans or complains as Heine 
 does, "O God, how ugly bitter tis to die!" nor 
 ever imagines that the future holds no better 
 fate than to "Pine away a blessed nothing in the 
 cold halls of Heaven." Heaven is not cold, but 
 warm with the joy and cheer of love, of fellow 
 ship, and of service: 
 
 Call me not dead when I, indeed, have gone 
 Into the company of the everliving 
 High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving 
 Rather be made. Say: "He at last hath won 
 
 Rest and release, converse supreme and wise, 
 Music and song and light of immortal faces ; 
 To-day, perhaps, wandering in starry places, 
 
 and listening still 
 To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill. " 
 
 The lovely lyric in which he commemorates 
 the death of Browning (who warned his friends 
 never to say of him that he was dead) is germane 
 to this subject, and is so brief and beautiful, so pure 
 and perfect, so simple and sincere a tribute, that it 
 must not be omitted : 
 
 On this day Browning died? 
 Say, rather: On the tide 
 
 That throbs against those glorious palace walls; 
 That rises pauses falls 
 
 With melody and myriad-tinted gleams; 
 
 On that enchanted tide, 
 
 Half real, and half poured from lovely dreams, 
 A soul of Beauty, a white, rhythmic flame, 
 ^assed singing forth into the Eternal Beauty whence 
 it came. 
 
THE IDEAL IN THE ACTUAL 73 
 
 And where will you find the universal hope 
 expressed with more of reverent reticence, with 
 greater delicacy of expression, with fuller feeling 
 of passionate ardor, than in the closing lines of 
 "The Celestial Passion"? lines that are in 
 truth a prayer, the outbreathing of the deep 
 yearning for immortality that is, after all, the 
 greatest need, the highest hope, and the most 
 precious possession of the sons and daughters of 
 Almighty God: 
 
 O Lord of Light, steep thou our souls in thee! 
 
 That when the daylight trembles into shade, 
 And falls the silence of mortality, 
 
 And all is done, we shall not be afraid, 
 But pass from light to light ; from earth s dull gleam 
 Into the very heart and heaven of our dream. 
 
 THE IDEAL IN THE ACTUAL 
 It has been elsewhere said that Mr. Gilder is 
 not merely a singer, but a worker; not only an 
 idealist, but also one who constantly strives to 
 embody his ideals in the realities of daily life. 
 Many of his lyrics are brief "In Memoriams" of 
 the men who have helped to lift the world to its 
 highest levels and to send it swiftening on the way 
 toward the realization of the Divine "purpose 
 and intent." His latest volume, In the Heights, 
 as its title indicates, is a call to men to live the 
 higher life. Not in selfish isolation or pride of 
 supposed superiority, but by the embodiment of 
 
74 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 the finest ideals of manhood in the life of the 
 home, the street, and the shop, is the world to be 
 ennobled. Society, civics, commerce, religion 
 must all be lifted to the heights of unselfish and 
 helpful service. One hears this call sounding out 
 from many of his lyrics, but in none more clearly 
 than in the hymn written and sung at the service 
 held a few years since in memory of Dr. J. L. M. 
 Curry, and eminently in the poem written in mem 
 ory of John Wesley and read by Mr. Gilder at 
 the Wesley Bicentennial Celebration at Wesleyan 
 University, Middletown, Connecticut, in June, 
 1903. Here is an ideal to inspire and hearten all 
 those who truly hope and surely look for the fulfill 
 ment of the prayer of Jesus, " Thy kingdom come. 
 Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven": 
 
 In those clear, piercing, piteous eyes behold 
 The very soul that over England flamed ! 
 Deep, pure, intense; consuming shame and ill; 
 Convicting men of sin; making faith live; 
 And, this the mightiest miracle of all, 
 Creating God again in human hearts. 
 
 Let not that image fade 
 Ever, O God! from out the minds of men, 
 Of him thy messenger and stainless priest, 
 In a brute, sodden, and unfaithful time, 
 Early and late, o er land and sea, on-driven; 
 In youth, in eager manhood, age extreme, 
 Driven on forever, back and forth the world, 
 By that divine, omnipotent desire 
 The hunger and the passion for men s souls! 
 
THE IDEAL IN THE ACTUAL 75 
 
 Dear God! 
 
 Thy servant never knew one selfish hour! 
 How are we shamed, who look upon a world 
 Ages afar from that true kingdom preached 
 Millenniums ago in Palestine! 
 
 Send us, again, O Spirit of all Truth! 
 High messengers of dauntless faith and power 
 Like him whose memory this day we praise, 
 We cherish and we praise with burning hearts. 
 Let kindle, as before, from his bright torch, 
 Myriads of messengers aflame with thee 
 To darkest places bearing light divine! 
 
 Increase thy prophets, Lord! Give strength to smite 
 Shame to the heart of luxury and sloth! 
 Give them the yearning after human souls 
 That burned in Wesley s breast! Through them, great 
 
 God! 
 
 Teach poverty it may be rich in thee; 
 Teach riches the true wealth of thine own Spirit. 
 To our loved land, Celestial Purity! 
 Bring back the meaning of those ancient words, 
 Not lost but soiled, and darkly disesteemed, 
 The ever-sacred names of husband, wife, 
 And the great name of Love, whereon is built 
 The temple of human happiness and hope! 
 Baptize with holy wrath thy prophets, Lord! 
 By them purge from us this corruption foul 
 That seizes on our civic governments, 
 Crowns the corrupter in the sight of men, 
 And makes him maker of laws, and honor s source! 
 
 Help us, in memory of the sainted dead, 
 Help us, O Heaven! to frame a nobler state, 
 In nobler lives rededicate to thee : 
 Symbol and part of the large brotherhood 
 Of man and nations ; one in one great love, 
 True love of God, which is the love of man, 
 In sacrifice and mutual service shown, 
 
76 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 Let kindle, as before, O Heavenly Lightl 
 New messengers of righteousness, and hope, 
 And courage, for our day! So shall the world 
 That ever, surely, climbs to thy desire 
 Grow swifter toward thy purpose and intent. 
 
 Amiel, the Genevan mystic, writes: "The 
 ideal is poison unless it be fused with the real, and 
 the real becomes corrupt without the perfume 
 of the ideal." It is to be hoped that the 
 ideal herein sketched, and finding abundant illus 
 tration in the work and writings of Mr. Gilder, 
 will also find practical embodiment in the lives of 
 all those who are glad to acknowledge inspiration 
 and motive, not only from Wesley s life and 
 words, but from the life and words of Wesley s 
 Lord and Master Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ 
 of God, who went about doing good. 
 
EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 77 
 
Am I my brother s keeper? Cain. 
 
 Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
 even so to them. Jesus. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 WHEN one becomes interested in what a man 
 says he is naturally interested in the man him 
 self. The life story is of value as an aid in inter 
 preting the life work. One cannot talk long with 
 Edwin Markham without being impressed with 
 his intellectual virility. His mind is rich in ideas. 
 The crude material out of which philosophies, 
 poems, paintings, and social passions are fash 
 ioned is surely here, and here in abundance. 
 One is not surprised to learn that his is a sturdy 
 ancestry intellectual and moral. On his father s 
 side the lineage runs back to Colonel William 
 Markham, first cousin and secretary to William 
 Penn, and later acting-governor of Pennsylvania, 
 and closely associated with Lord Baltimore in 
 important territorial matters. The maternal line, 
 through the Winchells, springs out of the best 
 Puritan stock of New and Old England and Hol 
 land. Many of the representatives of the family 
 can be traced among the notable figures in Holland, 
 England, and Colonial America. 
 
 Our author was born in Oregon, in 1852, 
 whither his pioneer parents had come from the 
 plains of Michigan. His father dying when the 
 
 79 
 
8o EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 boy was little more than four years old, we find 
 him somewhat later living with his mother in one 
 of the remote and romantic valleys of California. 
 His early companions were his mother, a woman 
 of silent and inflexible character, restrained rather 
 than effusive, and a brother deaf and dumb. 
 Under these circumstances the lad was naturally 
 dependent largely upon himself. His communion 
 must have been for the most part with nature, and 
 with his inner self. The years of mental brooding, 
 while he followed the cattle or folded the sheep, 
 developed depth, originality of thought, and later 
 of theme and its expression. These are the days 
 in his thought the while he sings: 
 
 When darkened hours come crowding fast. 
 
 A thought and all the dark is past ! 
 
 For I am back a boy again, 
 
 Knee-deep in heading barley in the Esmeralda glen. 
 
 How often when the brood of care 
 
 Would hold me in a hopeless snare, 
 
 My soul springs winged and away, 
 
 Remembering that wild ducks nest above Benicia bay! 
 
 Or when night finds me toiling still, 
 I am back again on the greening hill, 
 A shepherd boy at set of sun, 
 
 Folding his happy sheep and knowing all his tasks are done. 
 
 The Heart s Return. 
 
 His gift of song is partly an inheritance, for his 
 mother was a constant reader of Byron and Moore, 
 and was the local poetess of the neighborhood in 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 81 
 
 which she lived. Her verses were frequently 
 found in the papers of that region and time. 
 The first money that the boy earned was twenty- 
 five dollars for plowing a neighbor s field; 
 and it is significant of the mother s sense of 
 justice that though the money was much needed 
 in the home, yet when starting for town one day 
 she told the boy that the money was his, and that 
 he could have whatever he wished to buy with it. 
 And it is surely significant of the trend of the boy s 
 thought that at that early age (about fifteen or 
 sixteen) his asking was for Webster s Unabridged 
 Dictionary and the poems of Tennyson, Bryant, 
 and Moore! It is not difficult to imagine the use to 
 which he put these precious volumes in the leisure 
 that was his in the peaceful and sunny Suisun 
 Valley where he cared for the flocks and herds. He 
 had only slight chance for technical schooling 
 about three months in the year, and not always that 
 but he read and studied diligently, and made the 
 best use of whatever books came his way. Also 
 he worked and earned and saved in such various 
 ways as an ambitious boy always can find, until 
 at eighteen he entered the State Normal School 
 at San Jose, and later finished his school work at 
 Christian College, Santa Rosa, California. Be 
 lieving also in the value of handicraft, he mas 
 tered the secrets of blacksmithing and wrought at 
 
82 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 the forge with conscientious zeal. But men of 
 intellectual vigor and fair training were not so 
 plentiful in California that he could be permitted to 
 remain at the forge. The University of California 
 realized his worth and placed him in charge of the 
 Tompkins Observation School of Oakland, where 
 he remained till his relinquishment of technical 
 teaching for service in the higher school of litera 
 ture. In this brief note one other trait of Edwin 
 Markham should be mentioned. His friend and 
 neighbor Joaquin Miller expresses it when he says: 
 "Markham has always seemed to me the purest of 
 the pure; the cleanest-minded man of all the many 
 great and good of his high calling I have known, 
 and it has been my high privilege to know well 
 nearly all of the great authors of Saxon lands of this 
 last third of a century." The present writer 
 makes no claim of wide acquaintance with authors, 
 and hence is not competent to institute compari 
 sons; but he does bear glad and joyous witness 
 to the truth of Miller s words as to the impres 
 sion made upon him by contact and conversation 
 with Mr. Markham. His ideals are high, his 
 thoughts clean and inspirational, his speech 
 chaste, touched with the fire of prophecy, and filled 
 with faith and hope and love! His is essen 
 tially a religious nature, and to him religion 
 surely implies chastity and solidarity purity of 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 83 
 
 thought and life united with brotherliness of 
 spirit and deed. To use his own language, "The 
 race needs to be inbrothered, earth imparadised, 
 everything in relation to sex must be lifted to 
 touch the ideal and the poetic. The earth is to 
 be redeemed through the realization of this ideal 
 of sex and solidarity." Mr. Markham has writ 
 ten much on social and religious topics for the 
 magazines. Among the more important may 
 be mentioned, "Poetry the Soul of Religion," 
 and " Religion as the Art of Life, " in the Homiletic 
 Review, together with "The Poetry of Jesus" in 
 a recent issue of the Cosmopolitan. Of course, his 
 chief claim to recognition is found in the poems 
 gathered in the two volumes, The Man with the 
 Hoe, and Other Poems (Doubleday & McClure 
 Co.); Lincoln, and Other Poems (McClure, 
 Phillips & Co.); and a third volume of verse 
 now about to be published (1906). In the summer 
 time he lives quietly at Landing, New Jersey, and 
 in the winter months makes his home close to 
 the great city in Westerleigh, Staten Island. 
 
MARKHAM S MESSAGE 
 
 AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 I 
 
 To Edwin Markham poetry is not a byplay, 
 not the recreation of an idle hour. It is not 
 offered as an easy substitute for thought, some 
 thing that one may read merely for the pleasure 
 of the rhyme, or to satisfy a soft and sensuous 
 sentimentality. Poetry to him is a vocation, a 
 high and heavenly calling, the fit vehicle for the 
 expression of the truth that will not be silent. As 
 Paul cried, " Woe is me if I preach not the gospel," 
 so this man hears the command that pushes him 
 along his appointed way. To fail is to be recreant 
 to the deepest convictions of his soul. His it is to 
 speak whether men will hear, or whether they will 
 forbear. That he realizes the urge of his mission, 
 and that to him it is a duty that may not 
 be shirked without meriting the coward s fate, 
 is evident in his description of "The Poet": 
 
 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 centimes 
 To ease the steps and lift the load 
 Of souls that falter on the road. 
 
 84 
 
AN INTERPRETATION 85 
 
 He presses on before the race, 
 And sings out of a silent place. 
 Like faint notes of a forest bird 
 On heights afar that voice is heard; 
 And the dim path he breaks to-day 
 Will some time be a trodden way. 
 
 O men of earth, that wandering voice 
 Still goes the upward way: rejoice! 
 
 Poetry to him is not only a high and serious 
 vocation; it takes on somewhat of the nature of 
 revelation. He is not more poet than prophet. 
 Something of the inspiration and authority of the 
 prophets of truth and righteousness he would 
 claim, I fancy, for himself. The life-giving quality 
 of moments of vision, the swift and sure deduction 
 from some inspirational glimpse into the heart of 
 things all this he realizes and holds. One cannot 
 read "The Whirlwind Road" without being 
 reminded of Paul s experience in the third heaven, 
 where he heard things that could not be uttered 
 in human speech. So our poet, in moments of 
 inspiration, and on the Mounts of Vision; siees and 
 feels truths and ideals that at best can only be 
 shadowed forth and suggested in human song 
 
 and speech: 
 
 The Muses wrapped in mysteries of light 
 Came in a rush of music on the night; 
 And I was lifted wildly on quick wings, 
 And borne away into the deep of things. 
 The dead doors of my being broke apart ; 
 A wind of rapture blew across the heart ; 
 
86 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 The inward song of worlds rang still and clear; 
 I felt the Mystery the Muses fear; 
 Yet they went swiftening on the ways untrod, 
 And hurled me breathless at the feet of God. 
 
 I felt faint touches of the Final Truth 
 Moments of trembling love, moments of youth. 
 A vision swept away the human wall; 
 Slowly I saw the meaning of it all 
 Meaning of life and time and death and birth, 
 But cannot tell it to the men of Earth. 
 
 And how beautifully does he illustrate and 
 illume the same thought in these simple and musi 
 cal lines! 
 
 She comes like the hush and beauty of the night, 
 
 And sees too deep for laughter; 
 Her touch is a vibration and a light 
 
 From worlds before and after. 
 
 Poetry. 
 
 And then again, how vigorously and vitally does 
 he conceive the poet s mission! Here is no mys 
 tical muse singing of the joy of quiet and rest, 
 of the virtue of meditation and inaction in monas 
 tery and cell, but instead the clear voice and the 
 bugle call of a twentieth century knight of labor 
 and toil; one whose business and mission it is to 
 inspire men to ideals and deeds of noble and 
 heroic sacrifice and service: his mission, that of 
 the bard or skald of ancient times who sang the 
 glory and strength of the fathers for the inspira 
 tion and .strengthening of the sons; of the bugler of 
 
AN INTERPRETATION 87 
 
 to-day who on the field of fight by his clarion note 
 nerves the soldiery for the onset and charge of 
 victory : 
 
 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. 
 
 Let trifling pipe be mute, 
 
 Fling by the languid lute : 
 
 Take down the trumpet and confront the Hour, 
 And speak to toil-worn nations from a tower 
 Take down the horn wherein the thunders sleep, 
 Blow battles into men call down the fire 
 The daring, the long purpose, the desire; 
 Descend with faith into the Human Deep, 
 And ringing to the troops of right a cheer, 
 Make known the Truth of Man in holy fear; 
 Send forth thy spirit in a storm of song, 
 A tempest flinging fire upon the wrong. 
 
 To High-born Poets. 
 
 And as for the outcome of his song, that too 
 must be practical and find its fulfillment as it is 
 embodied in individual life and in the social order. 
 It will not content this singer that his readers shall 
 be touched to sentimentality, so that they will 
 speak sweet and honeyed praises for his message, 
 and then go their ways all unheeding its deeper 
 import and purpose. He is not willing that either 
 he or his message shall simply be conceived u as a 
 
88 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, 
 and can play well on an instrument: for they hear 
 thy words, but they do them not." He knows 
 full well that the value of his song is in proportion 
 to its incarnation in thought and life. Just as 
 God s richest and finest thought comes to fruition 
 in the Word made flesh, so our poet realizes that 
 it is the Song forceful and fruitful in speech and 
 deed that has power and efficacy. All this is 
 clearly and strongly set forth in his "Song Made 
 Flesh": 
 
 I have no glory in these songs of mine : 
 If one of them can make a brother strong, 
 
 It came down from the peaks of the divine 
 I heard it in the Heaven of Lyric Song. 
 
 The one who builds the poem into fact, 
 
 He is the rightful owner of it all : 
 The pale words are with God s own power packed 
 
 When brave souls answer to their bugle-call. 
 
 And so I ask no man to praise my song, 
 But I would have him build it in his soul ; 
 
 For that great praise would make me glad and strong, 
 And build the poem to a perfect whole. 
 
 II 
 
 When we come to a consideration of the mes 
 sage of Markham, when we ask, what is his 
 special and central contribution to the thought of 
 
AN INTERPRETATION 89 
 
 to-day ? the answer is not difficult. He is the poet 
 of humanity of man in relations. Always in his 
 thought is the consciousness of the social bond 
 that binds, or ought to bind, men into associations 
 and organizations for common weal. His muse 
 is tuned to the key of social brotherhood. It is 
 one theme, with many and delightful and suggest 
 ive combinations and variations. Just as the 
 musician combines and unites the simple notes 
 of the octave into the complexities and harmonies of 
 oratorio and symphony, so the poet weayes out of 
 this simple theme the harmony and symphony 
 of life. And this must not be taken as deprecia 
 tion, for even the greatest and most influential 
 singers and thinkers have their one central theme. 
 And it is only as we understand that, that we 
 have the key and clue to the meaning of their 
 singing and speaking. Stopford Brooke says of 
 Browning: "When Paracelsus was published in 
 1835 Browning had fully thought out, and in 
 that poem fully expressed, his theory of God s 
 relation to man, and of man s relation to the uni 
 verse around him, to his fellow men, and to the 
 world beyond. . . . Roughly sketched in Pauline, 
 fully rounded in Paracelsus, it held and satis 
 fied his mind till the day of his death." And he 
 adds that Browning escapes monotony "by the 
 immense variety of the subjects he chooses, and 
 
 7 
 
QO EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 of the scenery in which he places them" 1 in 
 other words, singleness of theme with variety of 
 treatment. The myriad-minded men are few. 
 Indeed, the day of cyclopedic information is gone. 
 The world is too vast, the subjects too many, for 
 the individual to grasp and hold. So we live in 
 the age of specialization. In physics, mechanics, 
 literature, and art men set themselves to the doing 
 of one thing. And it must not be forgotten that 
 the man who would do one thing well must of 
 necessity know many things with precision and 
 clearness. The most many-sided man of his day 
 was Paul, but he never lost sight of his objective. 
 "This one thing I do" was ever present in his 
 thought and efficient in his effort. He toiled and 
 traveled, he suffered and endured, he wrote and 
 spoke, but always with one clear outstanding 
 purpose the exaltation and depiction of Christ as 
 Redeemer and Lord. So Markham sings in various 
 keys, treats divers subjects, but always keeps his 
 main theme the Social Man in view. 
 
 Nature for him adumbrates, suggests, and illus 
 trates this truth. Religion is interpreted as a 
 social bond. Divine Fatherhood is the ground 
 and seal of human brotherhood. The will of 
 God is the will of the social welfare of the holy 
 brotherhood. Government municipal, state, and 
 
 ^he Poetry of Robert Browning, pp. 15, 16. 
 
AN INTERPRETATION 91 
 
 national is for the uplift and betterment, for the 
 closer joining in fellowship and service, of the 
 units that now too frequently struggle, and fight, 
 and fail, being alone. How clear this is may be 
 seen in " Brotherhood, " a poem that undoubtedly 
 goes to the heart of his message : 
 
 The crest and crowning of all good, 
 Life s final star, is Brotherhood; 
 For it will bring again to Earth 
 Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; 
 Will send new light on every face, 
 A kingly power upon the race. 
 And till it come, we men are slaves, 
 And travel downward to the dust of graves. 
 
 Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: 
 Blind creeds and kings have had their day. 
 Break the dead branches from the path: 
 Our hope is in the aftermath 
 Our hope is in heroic men, 
 Star-led to build the world again. 
 To this Event the ages ran: 
 Make way for Brotherhood make way for Man. 
 
 In Markham the sense of humanity, of the worth 
 and dignity of the individual first heralded in 
 the gospels, then dropping out of sight, coming 
 into view again in the French Revolution and in 
 the passionate outbursts of Shelley and his com 
 peers, finding fit phrasing in Burns s melodious 
 verse, voicing its hope in Tennyson s "Golden 
 Year" and "Locksley Hall" comes into full 
 view and has ample range and play. Without 
 
92 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 doubt he is endeavoring to hasten the day fore 
 seen by Burns when he sang: 
 
 Then let us pray that come it may, 
 
 As come it will for a that, 
 That sense and worth, o er a the earth 
 
 May bear the gree, and a that, 
 For a that, and a that, 
 
 It s coming yet, for a that, 
 That man to man, the warld o er, 
 
 Shall brothers be for a that. 
 
 Anxious he is to have something to do with the 
 quick inbringing of the time foretold by Tennyson : 
 
 When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, 
 
 But smit with freer light shall slowly melt 
 
 In many streams to fatten lower lands, 
 
 And light shall spread, and man be liker man 
 
 Thro all the season of the golden year. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In his portrayal of the social bond, in his call to 
 a brotherly kindness and helpfulness that shall be 
 real, organic, and universal, he becomes of necessity 
 the poet of the spiritual and ideal, as against the 
 material and the merely utilitarian conception of 
 life. When men conceive material possessions as 
 the highest good, when every man is striving for 
 position and power, when acquisition is uppermost 
 in every thought and most evident in endeavor 
 then men are in the fires of fiercest and bitterest 
 competition; then selfish greed and passion have 
 the mastery, and men are asking in the spirit and 
 
AN INTERPRETATION 93 
 
 speech of Cain, "Am I my brother s keeper?" 
 Markham holds that the way out is the spiritual 
 interpretation of the world, and its organization in 
 the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. He is no 
 singer of a brotherhood that rests in the materialis 
 tic conception of life. "The Muse of Brother 
 hood" declares this truth: 
 
 I am in the Expectancy that runs : 
 
 My feet are in the Future, whirled afar 
 
 On wings of light. If I have any sons, 
 Let them arise and follow to my star. 
 
 And at the first break of my Social Song 
 A hush will fall upon the foolish strife, 
 
 As though a joyous god, serene and strong, 
 Shined suddenly before the steps of life. 
 
 Cold hearts that falter are my only bar: 
 
 Heroes that seek my ever-fading goal 
 Must take their reckoning from the central star, 
 
 And follow the equator : I am Soul. 
 
 In the thought of our author, brotherhood is the 
 outspring of spirituality the deep truth latent 
 at the heart of the gospel so that he does not 
 hesitate to make his "Muse of Brotherhood" say: 
 
 I am Religion by her deeper name. 
 
 The same truth is taught in "The Mighty Hun 
 dred Years." In these man has come to self- 
 knowledge and self- rev elation as never before. 
 With all that has been gained he is ready for new 
 conquests and adventures. But the higher fields 
 
94 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 of knowledge, the finer adventures of the future, 
 lie in the realm of the immaterial and spiritual: 
 
 It is the hour of man: new Purposes, 
 
 Broad-shouldered, press against the world s slow gate; 
 And voices from the vast eternities 
 
 Still preach the soul s austere apostolate. 
 Always there will be vision for the heart, 
 
 The press of endless passion: every goal 
 A traveler s tavern, whence he must depart 
 
 On new divine adventures of the soul. 
 
 So too in "The World-Purpose." Men are 
 saying that the pursuit of the ideal and the spiritual 
 is in vain. It is all a vague and foolish dream. 
 Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. It is 
 the cry of the materialist and pessimist of every 
 age. It is heard especially to-day in this age of 
 stupendous material power, of forces well-nigh in 
 conceivable, and of wealth hitherto unimaginable. 
 Against all this the poet lifts his passionate protest. 
 The Spiritual Power is not sleeping or dead. It still 
 keeps watch and ward. As Lowell saw the triumph 
 of truth through the presence of the Eternal God 
 "keeping watch above his own," so Markham 
 sees, and speaks his faith in ringing words of hope 
 and cheer: 
 
 All that we glory in was once a dream; 
 
 The World-Will marches onward, gleam by gleam. 
 
 New voices speak, dead paths begin to stir: 
 
 Man is emerging from the sepulcher! 
 
 Let no man dare, let no man ever dare 
 
 To mark on Time s great way, "No Thoroughfare!" 
 
AN INTERPRETATION 95 
 
 And perhaps best embodiment of all in this 
 respect is his call "To Young America" this 
 nation so signally favored, so highly prospered, 
 endowed with a wealth of crude material and 
 native resource that cannot be computed or esti 
 mated, just emerging as a world-force, as a factor 
 in the mighty movements of modern life! Realiz 
 ing perhaps for the first time the greatness of her 
 opportunity, the richness of her privilege; tempted 
 as mayhap no nation has ever been to worship 
 the god of Mammon, to believe that man lives by 
 bread and bread only, how true and timely the 
 vision and the message of this singer of to-day! 
 
 In spite of the stare of the wise and the world s derision, 
 Dare travel the star-blazed road, dare follow the Vision. 
 
 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 Winged Ideal. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIAN 
 THOUGHT ILLUSTRATED 
 
 I 
 
 CONCEPTION OF LIFE 
 
 THAT Markham s thought and writing is deeply 
 influenced by the Christian conception of life is 
 not to be doubted. He deals with the average 
 man, the man of the shops and streets, the villages 
 and farms the artisans and laborers of every 
 age and class. Note some of his more important 
 titles : " The Man with the Hoe, " " The Sower, " 
 "The Toilers," "The Rock-Breaker," "The 
 Man Under the Stone," "The Angelas." And 
 indeed, whatever may be his text or title, his theme 
 is always the same: the people their woes and 
 needs, their nature and possibilities, their yearn 
 ings, hopes, and fears. The inspiration of it all 
 is the gospel. The common man comes to him 
 self in the gospel of Christ. Christ is in truth the 
 incarnation of the artisan s possibility and hope: 
 
 This is the gospel of labor ring it, ye bells of the kirk 
 The Lord of Love came down from above to live with the men 
 who work. 
 
 Van Dyke. 
 
 It was to simple and humble shepherds that the 
 
 tidings of great joy for all people was first revealed. 
 
 9 6 
 
CONCEPTION OF LIFE 97 
 
 Christ was born of a peasant woman, and worked 
 as a carpenter among the fellows of his class. 
 When he began his public ministry his first utter 
 ance showed that the common man was in his 
 thought "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
 because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel 
 to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken 
 hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and 
 recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty 
 them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable 
 year of the Lord." When he chose his special com 
 panions who were to learn his thought and inter 
 pret his purpose to the world they were of the 
 laborers and toilers. It was among such that he 
 lived and labored, opening blind eyes, vitalizing 
 lame limbs, and quickening dumb tongues. To 
 such as these his call sounded out, "Come unto 
 me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest." No wonder that the 
 common people heard him gladly; no wonder 
 that the sense of humanity suffuses the gos 
 pel; no wonder that Edwin Markham, this 
 poet of humanity, is drenched with the dew 
 of gospel grace, and that his listening shep 
 herds sing: 
 
 Haste, O people: all are bidden 
 Haste from places, high or hidden : 
 
 In Mary s Child the Kingdom comes, the heaven in beauty 
 bends! 
 
98 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 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. 
 
 He has come! the skies are telling: 
 
 He has quit the glorious dwelling; 
 And first the tidings came to us, the humble shepherd folk. 
 
 He has come to field and manger, 
 
 And no more is God a Stranger: 
 
 He comes as Common Man at home with cart and crooked 
 yoke. 
 
 As the shadow of a cedar 
 To a traveler in gray Kedar 
 
 Will be the kingdom of His love, the kingdom without end. 
 Tongues and ages may disclaim Him, 
 Yet the Heaven of heavens will name Him 
 Lord of peoples, Light of nations, elder Brother, tender 
 Friend. 
 
 The Song of the Shepherds. 
 
 II 
 
 DIGNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 The dignity and value of the individual is one 
 of the evident principles of Christ. A single soul 
 outvalues the material universe. A little child, 
 with his innocence and unselfishness, is a fitter 
 type of the spiritual kingdom than men and women 
 sitting in places of power and surrounded with 
 earthly accumulations and honors. The Master 
 always seemed to care more for an individual than 
 for a great crowd. The final truth with respect 
 to worship (that some one has said is to be the 
 foundation of the universal religion) he revealed 
 
DIGNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL 99 
 
 to an unknown and sin-soiled Samaritan. The 
 method of entrance into the kingdom, the secret 
 of spiritual birth and beginning, he taught to a 
 single questioner in the silence and secrecy of the 
 night. The most precious and priceless teaching 
 of the centuries he dropped casually, and seemingly 
 carelessly, to a few friends as they walked in the 
 roadways, or chatted in the Bethany home, or 
 feasted at some hospitable table. And all this 
 because he believed in the supreme value of per 
 sonality, and knew that the secret of abiding 
 influence and power was to get his truth enshrined 
 and embodied in some vital, enriched, and developed 
 individual. The influence of this is seen in our 
 poet. He has caught the teaching of the Master, 
 and man is of value to him not because of what he 
 has, nor yet because of the position he occupies, 
 but by virtue of what he really is. What sugges 
 tions of dignity, what shadowings forth of infinite 
 privilege and destiny, in this mystical stanza ! 
 
 Out of the deep and endless universe 
 There came a greater Mystery, a Shape, 
 A Something sad, inscrutable, august 
 One to confront the worlds and question them. 
 
 Man. 
 
 And something of the same truth is seen in "The 
 Tragedy." How busy we are with the concerns 
 of the daily and the material, how occupied with 
 the things that pertain to the present and the pass- 
 
ioo EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 ing. And how little concerned we are with the 
 realities of life, with those deeper powers and pos 
 sibilities that truly mark and make us Man. Mat 
 thew Arnold has the truth when he sings: 
 
 We see all sights from pole to pole, 
 
 We glance, and nod, and bustle by; 
 And never once possess our soul 
 Before we die. 
 
 And this is indeed the tragedy and pathos of life 
 the failure of man, or his inability, to see and appre 
 ciate the dignity, the beauty, and the grandeur of 
 the place he holds in the universe of God. And all 
 this our author suggests when he writes: 
 
 Oh, the fret of the brain, 
 
 And the wounds and the worry; 
 Oh, the thought of love and the thought of death 
 
 And the soul in its silent hurry. 
 
 But the stars break above, 
 
 And the fields flower under; 
 And the tragical life of man goes on, 
 
 Surrounded by beauty and wonder. 
 
 It is, however, in "The Sower " and in "The 
 Angelus" that we have his definite portrayal of 
 the worth of the peasant to the world s life. In 
 the former he has been looking at Millet s painting, 
 and the suggestion in it touches his brooding 
 thought. He thinks of this Sower as the type of 
 his class; he sees how dependent the world of 
 fashion, wealth, and power is upon this disregarded 
 and disesteemed tiller of the soil. And as the 
 
DIGNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL 101 
 
 vision brightens there glows and greatens about 
 that homely figure the glory and dignity of person 
 ality, and the elemental import of the simple toil of 
 simple and hardy folk : 
 
 Who is it coming on the slant brown slope, 
 Touched by the twilight and her mournful hope 
 Coming with hero step, with rhythmic swing, 
 Where all the bodily motions weave and sing? 
 The grief of the ground is in him, yet the power 
 Of Earth to hide the furrow with the flower. 
 
 He is the stone rejected, yet the stone 
 
 Whereon is built metropolis and throne. 
 
 Out of his toil come all their pompous shows, 
 
 Their purple luxury and plush repose! 
 
 The grime of this bruised hand keeps tender white 
 
 The hands that never labor, day nor night. 
 
 His feet that only know the field s rough floors 
 
 Send lordly steps down echoing corridors. 
 
 Yea, this vicarious toiler at the plow 
 Gives that fine pallor to my lady s brow. 
 And idle armies with their boom and blare, 
 Flinging their foolish glory on the air 
 He hides their nakedness, he gives them bed, 
 And by his alms their hungry mouths are fed. 
 
 "The Angelus" suggests to him the unity of 
 worship and of work. He holds the truth that 
 work rightly done is worship, and that if a man 
 has the right spirit all his life is an offering to God. 
 As one of our hymns states : 
 
 Work shall be prayer, if all be wrought 
 
 As thou wouldst have it done ; 
 And prayer, by thee inspired and taught, 
 
 Itself with work be one. John Ellerton. 
 
IO2 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 The bowing peasants with reverent thought 
 and worshipful attitude remind him of George 
 Herbert s words, quaint and true: 
 
 Teach me, my God and King, 
 
 In all things thee to see, 
 And what I do in anything, 
 
 To do it as for thee. 
 
 A servant with this clause 
 
 Makes drudgery divine: 
 Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws 
 
 Makes that and th action fine. 
 This is the famous stone 
 
 That turneth all to gold: 
 For that which God doth touch and own 
 
 Cannot for less be told. The Elixir. 
 
 And so he portrays this commonalty and com 
 munity of labor and of prayer, depicting the sacra 
 mental nature of life s daily task, and showing that 
 the uplifting of the day s work, as an offering to 
 God, sanctifies the gift and the giver and suffuses 
 the gift with the sweet incense of the morning 
 and the evening sacrifice : 
 
 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! 
 And richer are their twofold worshipings 
 Than flare of pontiff or the pomp of kings. 
 For each true deed is worship: it is prayer, 
 And carries its own answer unaware. 
 Yes, they whose feet upon good errands run 
 Are friends of God, with Michael of the sun ; 
 Yes, each accomplished service of the day 
 Paves for the feet of God a lordlier way. 
 
SYMPATHY 103 
 
 He is more pleased by some sweet human use 
 Than by the learned book of the recluse ; 
 Sweeter are comrade kindnesses to Him 
 Than the high harpings of the Seraphim; 
 More than white incense circling to the dome 
 Is a field well furrowed or a nail sent home. 
 More than the hallelujahs of the choirs, 
 Or hushed adorings at the altar fires, 
 Is a loaf well kneaded, or a room swept clean, 
 With light-heart love that finds no labor mean. 
 
 Ill 
 
 SYMPATHY 
 
 One of the characteristic notes of Markham s 
 song is his sympathy for the burden bearers and 
 toilers. The men in the field who do the hard, 
 foundation work that is too often unrecognized 
 and but poorly requited; the women who stitch 
 and sometimes are stunted and starved in body 
 and soul by pinching poverty and meager oppor 
 tunity these are ever in his thought. And 
 coordinating with this truth is his vision of selfish 
 greed, the grinding hand of power and place laid 
 upon the poor and the lowly; all the hatred, 
 injustice, and unbrotherliness of men sometimes 
 purposeful and conscious, and at other times simply 
 the fruitage of an imperfect social and civic state 
 that makes men its unconscious instruments. 
 Visions such as these constantly swim in his ken 
 and move him to champion the cause of the toiler, 
 while at the same time he reveals the gross injustice 
 
 v 
 
 I UNIVt 
 
IO4 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 and the deep injury done to individuals and 
 society by the long tolerance of imperfect and bane 
 ful social, civic, and industrial ideals. The outwork 
 ing of sin in its manifold forms of selfish indiffer 
 ence, greed, unbrotherliness, and injustice is clearly 
 seen. He knows that behind all the inequities and 
 iniquities of the social and civic state is the dark 
 shadow of sin, individual and social. The joyless- 
 ness and the hopelessness, the mute despair of the 
 multitudes are all due to the inworking principle of 
 sin, whose fruitage is seen in the varied forms of 
 life and experience. Where there is no sin labor is 
 in itself a source of joy and happiness instead of 
 being, as so often it is among men, a cause of 
 misery and wretchedness. Two little poems of 
 his reveal this truth clearly. In the one he notes 
 the cooperation and happy toil of ants, the equal 
 labor and reward, and contrasts it with the plot 
 and scheme of man to use his brother for his own 
 selfish greed and gain: 
 
 Little ants in leafy wood, 
 Bound by gentle Brotherhood, 
 
 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 ; 
 Glad to find him in a pit, 
 If we get some gain of it. 
 
SYMPATHY 105 
 
 So with us, the sons of Time, 
 Labor is a kind of crime, 
 For the toilers have the least, 
 While the idlers lord the feast. 
 Yes, our workers they are bound, 
 Pallid captives to the ground; 
 Jeered by traitors, fooled by knaves, 
 Till they stumble into graves. 
 
 How appears to tiny eyes 
 All this wisdom of the wise? 
 
 Little Brothers of the Ground. 
 
 In the other he sees the birds at work building 
 their nests, he hears their joyous bursts of full- 
 throated song; and as these little tenants of the 
 tree-tops busily build and gayly sing, filling the 
 air with their delicious music, he knows that the 
 purpose of God for bird and man is joy and peace. 
 But as he turns to human builders he finds no such 
 jocund mood; no such delight in labor as gladdens 
 and lightens the toil of the bird: 
 
 I dwell near a murmur of leaves, 
 
 And my labor is sweeter than rest; 
 For over my head in the shade of the eaves 
 
 A throstle is building his nest. 
 
 And he teaches me gospels of joy, 
 
 As he gurgles and shouts in his toil : 
 It is brimming with rapture, his wild employ, 
 
 Bearing a straw for spoil. 
 
 So I know twas a joyous God 
 
 Who stretched out the splendor of things, 
 And gave to my bird the cool green sod, 
 
 A sky, and a venture of wings. 
 8 
 
106 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 But why are my brothers so still? 
 
 They are building a lordly hall-- 
 They are building a palace there on the hill, 
 
 But there s never a song in it all! 
 
 The Builders. 
 
 How it reminds one of the sentiment of Matthew 
 Arnold, who also saw the sadness and the bitter 
 hopelessness of many of the world s workers when 
 he said: 
 
 For most men in a brazen prison live, 
 Where, in the sun s hot eye, 
 With heads bent o er their toil, they languidly 
 Their lives to some unmeaning task- work give, 
 Dreaming of naught beyond their prison-wall. 
 
 A Summer Night. 
 
 The way in which men under the power and 
 sway of selfishness, which in our author s concept 
 is the very heart and center of sin, oppress and 
 grind their fellows, using them remorselessly for 
 their own ends and then flinging them aside as 
 thoughtlessly and as ruthlessly as they would fling 
 away an outworn tool, is clearly seen and unflinch 
 ingly portrayed. In "The Toilers" we see them 
 drudging in the pastures and furrows, not much 
 better in their own thought than the beasts of the 
 field, and surely not more regarded in the estimate 
 of their employers : 
 
 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. 
 
SYMPATHY 107 
 
 And when one notes what has but just now hap 
 pened in Russia, the pitiable case of the peasantry 
 and the artisans in that great land indeed, of all 
 who are not of the nobility and the privileged 
 classes he feels that these words are none too 
 strong. Similarly in "A Harvest Song," the 
 reapers and harvesters are necessary adjuncts 
 in the saving of the grain, but they are of small 
 consequence in the thought of the great nobles 
 and landlords who hold the broad acres, and care 
 little or nothing for their less favored fellows: 
 
 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. 
 
 But Markham well knows that all the evil 
 of this state is not visited on the men who 
 toil and moil in heat and cold. The selfish, 
 cruel, and unbrotherly man receives an arrow 
 in his own life that poisons the spring of true 
 enjoyment. "The Goblin Laugh" reveals the 
 powerlessness of this way of life to satisfy, and 
 hauntingly suggests the tantalizing and ever-fail 
 ing search of the unbrotherly after the deep joy 
 and peace of life : 
 
 When I behold how men and women grind 
 And grovel for some place of pomp or power, 
 To shine and circle through a crumbling hour, 
 
 Forgetting the large mansions of the mind, 
 
io8 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 That are the rest and shelter of mankind ; 
 
 And when I see them come with wearied brains 
 Pallid and powerless to enjoy their gains, 
 
 I seem to hear a goblin laugh unwind. 
 
 And even deeper than this failure to attain is 
 the certainty of an Eternal Power keeping watch 
 and ward, "One that remembers, reckons, and 
 repays. " This man of greed and cruelty may not 
 hope to escape the consequence of his sin. The re 
 ward of sin is not more clearly certified in the gos 
 pels than in the suggestions and statements of many 
 of these poems. In the second part of "Dreyfus" 
 one sees this truth outstanding clear and bright: 
 
 Oh, import deep as life is, deep as time! 
 There is a Something sacred and sublime, 
 Moving behind the worlds, beyond our ken, 
 Weighing the stars, weighing the deeds of men. 
 Take heart, O soul of sorrow, and be strong: 
 There is One greater than the whole world s wrong. 
 Be hushed before the high benignant Power 
 That goes untarrying to the reckoning hour. 
 O men that forge the fetter, it is vain : 
 There is a Still Hand stronger than your chain. 
 Tis no avail to bargain, sneer, and nod, 
 And shrug the shoulder for reply to God. 
 
 In view of all this it is surely not to be wondered 
 at that the poet s sympathy is deeply stirred for 
 those whose sad lot he so vividly conceives and so 
 clearly portrays. This note of sympathy is struck 
 in many of his writings. Indeed, often when it is not 
 specifically heard it is the deep and suggestive 
 undertone. But one does not have to read much 
 
SYMPATHY 109 
 
 in Markham, nor search long, before he comes to 
 the direct and earnest expression of this genuine 
 brotherly interest and sympathy. In that poem 
 that perhaps first of all brought him into public 
 notice and gave him fame, "The Man with the 
 Hoe," it speaks in no uncertain tone. Written 
 as this was after seeing Millet s picture, and with 
 the word of Scripture, "God created man in his 
 own image, in the image of God created he him, " as 
 a text and foundation thought, it throbs and beats 
 in every line with a deep human sympathy for the 
 man who through carelessness and cruelty, by 
 adversity and environment, had not been able to 
 realize Tennyson s ideal and 
 
 Arise and fly 
 
 The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; 
 Move upward, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die. 
 
 How the heart of the poet glows and gleams in 
 his passionate questions and deductions! 
 
 Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave 
 
 To have dominion over sea and land; 
 
 To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; 
 
 To feel the passion of Eternity? 
 
 Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns 
 
 And pillared the blue firmament with light? 
 
 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. 
 
no EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 
 
 Is this the handiwork you give to God, 
 
 This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? 
 
 How will you ever straighten up this shape ; 
 
 Touch it again with immortality; 
 
 Give back the upward looking and the light; 
 
 Rebuild in it the music and the dream; 
 
 Make right the immemorial infamies, 
 
 Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? 
 
 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? 
 
 And what a sympathetic picture is that he draws 
 in "The Man Under the Stone"! the working- 
 man with wife and children needing food and cloth 
 ing, and he himself toiling early and late, day after 
 day, for a mere pittance. Suppose work slackens, 
 suppose sickness comes as it almost always does 
 come, suppose accident befalls this man on whom 
 so much depends! We know the result; he seems 
 just getting ahead, just about to push the great 
 stone to the summit, when one or other of those 
 calamities happens, and it is the labor of Sisyphus 
 over again. "The destruction of the poor is their 
 poverty. " So the Bible says, so it is, and so Mark- 
 ham sees and sings: 
 
 When I see a workingman with mouths to feed, 
 Up, day after day, in the dark before the dawn, 
 And coming home, night after night, through the dusk, 
 
SYMPATHY 1 1 1 
 
 Swinging forward like some fierce silent animal, 
 
 I see a man doomed to roll a huge stone up an endless steep. 
 
 He strains it onward inch by stubborn inch, 
 
 Crouched always in the shadow of the rock. . . . 
 
 See where he crouches, twisted, cramped, misshapen! 
 
 He lifts for their life; 
 
 The veins knot and darken 
 
 Blood surges into his face. . . . 
 
 Now he loses now he wins 
 
 Now he loses loses (God of my soul!) 
 
 He digs his feet into the earth 
 
 There s a moment of terrified effort. . . 
 
 Will the huge stone break his hold, 
 
 And crush him as it plunges to the gulf ? 
 
 The silent struggle goes on and on, 
 Like two contending in a dream. 
 
 And our poet never forgets. He is singing "A 
 Lyric of the Dawn"; you are out with him in the 
 woodland ways and the dewy dells. You walk the 
 meadows and joy in the golden light of the sun; you 
 see all the wonder and beauty of the world life, the 
 music of the murmuring river, the deep sound of the 
 surf as it breaks on the shore, the laughter of the 
 wind, the scent of the dewy grass, the song of the 
 thrush! And you are so enchained and enchanted, 
 so delighted and intoxicated with the beauty and 
 delight of it all, that you forget all about the bitter 
 ness and sorrow of human life. Not so the poet 
 he sees, and hears, and enjoys all that you do, but 
 he forgets not the men in the valley of despondency, 
 and the morning song of the bird kindles in him a 
 sympathetic desire that a like joy may somehow 
 
H2 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 come into the hearts and lives of his distressed 
 and wearied fellow workers : 
 
 Carol, my king, 
 
 On your bough aswing! 
 
 Thou art not of these evil days 
 
 Thou art a voice of the world s lost youth: 
 
 Oh, tell me what is duty what is truth 
 
 How to find God upon these hungry ways ; 
 
 Tell of the golden prime, 
 
 When men beheld swift deities descend, 
 
 Before the race was left alone with Time, 
 
 Homesick on Earth, and homeless to the end, 
 
 When bird and beast could make a man their friend. 
 
 Sing of the wonders of their woodland ways, 
 
 Before the weird earth-hunger of these days, 
 
 When there was rippling mirth, 
 
 When justice was on Earth, 
 
 And light and grandeur of the Golden Age; 
 
 When never a heart was sad, 
 
 When all from king to herdsman had 
 
 A penny for a wage. 
 
 Ah, that old time has faded to a dream 
 
 The moon s fair face is broken in the stream; 
 
 Yet shout and carol on, O bird, and let 
 
 The exiled race not utterly forget; 
 
 Publish thy revelation on the lawns 
 
 Sing ever in the dark ethereal dawns; 
 
 Sometime, in some sweet year, 
 
 These stormy souls, these men of Earth may hear. 
 
 This deep and tender feeling is the underlying 
 inspiration of two or three other beautifully sug 
 gestive songs. It is the ground swell that bears 
 them to their bourn. It sobs in the final question 
 of "A Cry in the Night," and it ever haunts as a 
 
SYMPATHY 113 
 
 ghost the aim and yellow page of the " Devil s Jest- 
 Book," from which he transcribes a leaf that we 
 may hear a ghostly voice tell in a weirdly way 
 the fate of mistress and maiden, high-born lady and 
 lowly and lonely sempstress: 
 
 And so this glimmering life at last recedes 
 In unknown, endless depths beyond recall; 
 
 And what s the worth of all our ancient creeds, 
 If here at the end of ages this is all 
 A white face floating in the whirling ball, 
 
 A dead face plashing in the river reeds ? 
 
 A Leaf from the Devil s Jest-Book. 
 
 And it is the same feeling, true and noble, that 
 finds expression in his song, "On the Gulf of 
 Night." It is suffused with a passionate pity and 
 yearning brotherliness for the storm-shaken, 
 tempest-tossed, and ever-wandering petrels on the 
 yeasting sea of social life the men and women 
 who find no resting place for their feet, though 
 they seek it with earnestness and tears: 
 
 The world s sad petrels dwell for evermore 
 On windy headland or on ocectii floor. 
 
 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. 
 
 But soon the dark comes wilder than before, 
 And swift around them breaks a sullen roar; 
 The tempest calls to windward and to lee, 
 And they are seabirds on the homeless sea. 
 
H4 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 And surely we do not mistake when we interpret 
 the exquisite little gem entitled "A Prayer" as 
 the outgushing of this deep and pure well of human 
 sympathy. It is evident that the meaning and pur 
 pose of all that he may gain from communion and 
 fellowship with the Divine Father is that some way 
 he may use it for his fellows, that somehow he and 
 his work may be as "the shadow of a great rock 
 in a weary land," as a spring of water in the dry 
 and thirsty ground: 
 
 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. 
 
 Teach me, Father, how to be 
 Kind and patient as a tree. 
 Joyfully the crickets croon 
 Under shady oak at noon; 
 Beetle, on his mission bent, 
 Tarries in that cooling tent. 
 Let me, also, cheer a spot, 
 Hidden field or garden grot 
 Place where passing souls can rest 
 On the way and be their best. 
 
 Now, surely it is not difficult to see in all this 
 the influence of Christian thought. Christianity 
 is a sympathetic religion, and if its representatives 
 have not always fully and fairly embodied this ele- 
 
FRATERNITY 115 
 
 ment, the great Founder never failed. How often 
 is it said of him that he had compassion on the 
 multitudes! He saw them scattered as sheep 
 without a shepherd, he heard their cry in the wilder 
 ness. He saw them the prey of the spoiler (eccle 
 siastical and political), and always his heart was 
 touched to tenderness, his hand outstretched in 
 helpfulness, and his lips moved to the music of 
 gracious, comforting, and healing speech. It is to 
 him that Markham goes for his interpretation of 
 religion and the religious life. Back of all forms 
 and faiths he touches the object of all true 
 faith, and the living virtue of that touch abides, 
 and is the continuing inspiration of his sym 
 pathetic and brotherly singing. 
 
 IV 
 
 FRATERNITY 
 
 And the influence of Christian thought is seen 
 again in the way in which a true brotherhood is 
 set forth, as the alleviation and cure of all 
 these social ills and sufferings. That the Chris 
 tian doctrine of Brotherhood, as suggested and 
 unfolded in New Testament practice, has taken 
 firm hold of the poet s mind cannot be doubted. 
 To the question of Cain, "Am I my brother s 
 keeper?" Markham makes answer, "We are 
 born for the practice of the Golden Rule." 
 
n6 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 Christ s doctrine of neighborliness as taught in the 
 parable of the Good Samaritan is a chief element 
 in Markham s teaching concerning brotherliness. 
 It is not the man in your social set, or in your busi 
 ness vocation, or your political party, or your reli 
 gious creed that is alone your brother. The veriest 
 outcast, the man perhaps at the farthest remove 
 from you socially, industrially, and religiously, has 
 none the less a brother s claim on you. And this 
 is over again the New Testament teaching and the 
 New Testament practice with its deep and broad 
 implications. His business as a poet indeed, the 
 business of every poet and prophet worthy the 
 name, and of all earnest and serious thinkers 
 and livers is to hasten the era of brotherhood 
 with all its wide implications and bearings as 
 respects society and state. He insists that the 
 practical concern of true religion is to find a ma 
 terial basis for brotherhood. The state now has 
 a working form of selfishness, it must be made 
 to have a working form of love. There is no 
 peace nor rest till this great aim be accom 
 plished: 
 
 No peace for thee, no peace, 
 
 Till blind oppression cease; 
 
 Till the stones cry from the walls, 
 
 Till the gray injustice falls 
 Till strong men come to build in freedom-fate 
 The pillars of the new Fraternal State. 
 
 To High-born Poets. 
 
FRATERNITY 117 
 
 History teaches this truth. The hoary ruins of 
 the past prove that the nations forgetful of the duty 
 and privilege of brotherly kindness and helpfulness 
 are forgetful also of the foundation that makes for 
 permanence. It is Lowell who says that "Moral 
 supremacy is the only kind that leaves monuments 
 and not ruins behind it." And moral supremacy 
 is impossible to the nations that build on self and 
 selfish greed. In "The Witness of the Dust" 
 Markham calls the ruins of Babylon and Tyre to 
 testify to the truth of his contention : 
 
 Voices are crying from the dust of Tyre, 
 From Baalbec and the stonds of Babylon 
 
 "We raised our pillars upon Self-Desire, 
 
 And perished from the large gaze of the sun." 
 
 Eternity was on the pyramid, 
 
 And immortality on Greece and Rome; 
 
 But in them all the ancient Traitor hid, 
 And so they tottered like unstable foam. 
 
 There was no substance in their soaring hopes : 
 The voice of Thebes is now a desert cry; 
 
 A spider bars the road with filmy ropes 
 
 Where once the feet of Carthage thundered by. 
 
 A bittern booms where once fair Helen laughed; 
 
 A thistle nods where once the Forum poured ; 
 A lizard lifts and listens on a shaft 
 
 Where once of old the Colosseum roared. 
 
 No house can stand, no kingdom can endure, 
 Built on the crumbling rock of Self-Desire : 
 
 Nothing is Living Stone, nothing is sure, 
 That is not whitened in the Social Fire. 
 
Ii8 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 To the same purport are the lines of Kipling in 
 his "Recessional": 
 
 Far-called, our navies melt away 
 On dune and headland sinks the fire 
 
 Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
 Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! 
 
 Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, 
 
 Lest we forget lest we forget! 
 
 For heathen hearts that put their trust 
 
 In iron tube and reeking shard 
 All valiant dust that builds on dust, 
 
 And guarding calls not Thee to guard. 
 For frantic boast and foolish word, 
 Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! 
 
 And what a suggestive picture is that which 
 Markham gives in Semiramis, or " A Look into the 
 Gulf"! In her is embodied the fate of the cruel, 
 the greedy and grinding nations of antiquity; the 
 nations full of hate and lust, and all unspeakable 
 and well-nigh unimaginable crimes and infamies 
 against human brotherhood : 
 
 I looked one night, and there Semiramis, 
 With all her mourning doves about her head, 
 Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell, 
 Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon 
 Snatches of song they sang to her of old 
 Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh. 
 And then her voice rang out with rattling laugh: 
 "The bugles! they are crying back again 
 Bugles that broke the nights of Babylon, 
 And then went crying on through Nineveh. 
 
FRATERNITY 119 
 
 Stand back, ye trembling messengers of ill! 
 
 Women, let go my hair: I am the Queen, 
 
 A whirlwind and a blaze of swords to quell 
 
 Insurgent cities. Let the iron tread 
 
 Of armies shake the earth. Look, lofty towers: 
 
 Assyria goes by upon the wind!" 
 
 And so she babbles by the ancient road, 
 
 While cities turned to dust upon the Earth 
 
 Rise through her whirling brain to live again 
 
 Babbles all night, and when her voice is dead 
 
 Her weary lips beat on without a sound. 
 
 And nature, too, is an illustration of the value of 
 fraternity. God s message to men is written not 
 only in THE Book and in history, but in the life of 
 the field and the face of the sky. "Day unto day 
 uttereth speech," a speech not to be misunderstood 
 or misinterpreted by men of pure purpose, high 
 ideals, and noble aims. And even from the life of 
 the fields our poet gathers material for the empha 
 sizing of his theme : 
 
 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. 
 
 Yes, since the first star they have stood 
 A testament of Brotherhood. 
 
 The Field Fraternity. 
 
 And since revelation, history, and nature all 
 bespeak and illustrate the need, value, and power 
 of brotherhood, so the business of men and nations 
 
I2O EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 is to quicken the coming of the new and greatly 
 needed social era. Especially is this true of the 
 new democracy of our time. The old world and 
 old-world peoples are too firmly fixed in their old- 
 time ideas and ways, but here in this new world 
 where "the elements of empire are plastic yet and 
 warm," here is room for the high and noble ideals 
 of brotherhood to be proclaimed and achieved. 
 This is the note that is heard in "The Errand 
 Imperious": 
 
 But harken, my America, my own, 
 
 Great Mother, with the hill-flower in your hair! 
 
 Diviner is that light you bear alone, 
 That dream that keeps your face forever fair. 
 
 Imperious is your errand and sublime, 
 
 And that which binds you is Orion s band. 
 
 For some large Purpose, since the youth of Time, 
 You were kept hidden in the Lord s right hand. 
 
 Tis yours to bear the World-State in your dream, 
 To strike down Mammon and his brazen breed, 
 
 To build the Brother-Future, beam on beam; 
 Yours, mighty one, to shape the Mighty Deed. 
 
 And the cry is for leadership for some one 
 who will feel the heart-grief and call of humanity, 
 and will be the modern Moses to lead the people out 
 of the present wilderness of social and industrial 
 strife into the peace and quiet of some fraternal 
 Canaan: 
 
FRATERNITY 121 
 
 So we await the Leader to appear, 
 
 Lover of men, thinker and doer and seer, 
 
 The hero who will fill the labor throne 
 
 And build the Comrade Kingdom, stone by stone. 
 
 Earth listens for the coming of his feet; 
 
 The hushed Fates lean expectant from their seat. 
 
 He will be calm and reverent and strong, 
 
 And, carrying in his words the fire of song, 
 
 Will send a hope upon these weary men, 
 
 A hope to make the heart grow young again, 
 
 A cry to comrades scattered and afar. 
 
 Without doubt this leader will be the man 
 described in "The Need of the Hour," fearless 
 and faithful, honest and true, believing in himself, 
 his fellows, and his God, and not afraid to utter 
 truth that to many will seem strange and new, 
 and he will walk as a pioneer in the unfrequented 
 ways of social progress; one who will have 
 
 The fine audacities of honest deed ; 
 
 The homely old integrities of soul; 
 
 The swift temerities that take the part 
 
 Of outcast right the wisdom of the heart; 
 
 Brave hopes that Mammon never can detain, 
 
 Nor sully with his gainless clutch for gain. 
 
 The faith to go a path untrod, 
 The power to be alone and vote with God. 
 
 And it is because Lincoln was such a man, and 
 because Markham has so conceived him, that he 
 has been able to write what is, I think, the best 
 Lincoln poem we possess. Lincoln was one of the 
 people; he understood them as possibly no other 
 
122 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 man of his day. Because of this he could inter 
 pret them, could speak to, touch, mold, and in 
 fluence them as few men have been able to do. 
 And when the great crisis came the heart of the 
 people safely trusted the wisdom and purpose of 
 "Honest Abe," who was one with them in that 
 rugged integrity, that simple sincerity and direct 
 ness, that is at the heart and center of artisan and 
 peasant life. When Markham describes him he 
 is describing not only the leader who saved the 
 nation in the hour of great darkness and desperate 
 need, but he is also outlining the type of man who 
 will lead the nation out of the social chaos and 
 industrial disorder that our author deems so 
 evident and unworthy a characteristic of our age: 
 
 When the Norn-Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour, 
 
 Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, 
 
 She bent the strenuous Heavens and came down 
 
 To make a man to meet the mortal need. 
 
 She took the tried clay of the common road 
 
 Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth 
 
 Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; 
 
 Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. 
 
 It was a stuff to wear for centuries, 
 
 A man that matched the mountains, and compelled 
 
 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; 
 
BROTHERHOOD IN CHRIST 123 
 
 The pity of the snow that hides all scars; 
 The 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 so he came. 
 
 From prairie cabin up to Capitol, 
 One fair Ideal led our chieftain on. 
 For evermore he burned to do his deed 
 With the fine stroke and gesture of a king. 
 He built the rail-pile as he built the State, 
 Pouring his splendid strength through every blow, 
 The conscience of him testing every stroke, 
 To make his deed the measure of a man. 
 
 So came the Captain with the mighty heart : 
 And when the step of Earthquake shook the house, 
 Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold, 
 He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again 
 The rafters of the Home. He held his place 
 Held the long purpose like a growing tree 
 Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. 
 And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down 
 As when a kingly cedar green with boughs 
 Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 
 And leaves a Ipnesome place against the sky. 
 
 Lincoln, the Man of the People. 
 
 V 
 
 BROTHERHOOD IN CHRIST 
 It is highly significant that Mr. Markham s 
 hope for better social, civic, and industrial con 
 ditions is grounded in essential Christianity; 
 not in creeds, or forms, or interpretations, but 
 
124 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 in that which is Christianity s elemental and 
 unshakable strength Christ. It has been well 
 said that all men who look for better conditions 
 in the life of this world do some way turn to Christ 
 as the fulfillment of their hope. Our poet has 
 no faith in socialistic and anarchistic schemes that 
 shut out God and Christ with all their vast and 
 varied implications. In some stanzas dedicated 
 to Louise Michel he says: 
 
 I cannot take your road, Louise Michel, 
 Priestess of Pity and of Vengeance no: 
 Down that amorphous gulf I cannot go 
 
 That gulf of Anarchy whose pit is Hell. 
 
 And his "Muse of Labor," whose text is, "And 
 I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth," sings 
 not of a fraternal state that is to be founded on 
 lawlessness and atheism that were building on 
 sand; but of one grounded in the solid and eternal 
 Rock Christ : 
 
 I stand by Him, the Hero of the Cross, 
 
 To hurl down traitors that misspend His bread; 
 
 I touch the star of mystery and loss 
 To shake the kingdoms of the living dead. 
 
 I wear the flower of Christus for a crown; 
 
 I poise the suns and give to each a name ; 
 And through the hushed Eternity bend down 
 
 To strengthen gods and keep their souls from blame. 
 
 Our poet objects that the present order does not 
 give what he calls "brother-bread. " The " Muse of 
 
BROTHERHOOD IN CHRIST 125 
 
 Labor" sings and works for the sure-coming time 
 when along with the daily bread there will be 
 brother-bread, bread of the kingdom, enough and 
 to spare for all. 
 
 That he believes that God is, and that he is 
 working in and through all forms of organized 
 life for the uplift of mankind, for the amelioration 
 of imperfect conditions, is clearly evident. Our 
 poet is not a poet of the past, but of the present. 
 There may have been beautiful days and types in 
 the ages gone, but better and more beautiful are 
 still to come. He is not a prophet of despair, but 
 of hope. He sees the hand and purpose of God 
 working through good and evil, guiding, control 
 ling, and restraining to one high end and noble 
 destiny the building of a brotherhood on earth 
 that shall be conformable to the thought and 
 type that lies in the mind of the Eternal Father. 
 This is indicated in "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 aglowing 
 Of the shaping souls behind them. 
 
 .....* 
 
 See the still hand of the Shaper, 
 
 Moving in the dusk of being: 
 Burns at first a misty taper, 
 Like the moon in veil of vapor, 
 
 When the rack of night is fleeing 
 
ia6 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 So the Lord of Life is flinging 
 Out a splendor that conceals Him; 
 
 And the God is softly singing 
 
 And on secret ways is winging, 
 
 Till the rush of song reveals Him. 
 
 And this that is only shadowed and suggested in 
 the just quoted lines comes forth in clear and defi 
 nite expression in "The New Century." Man has 
 laid his spell upon the continents and they confess 
 to him their secret source of treasure; his scepter 
 of power is upon the realms of nature, and they 
 pay him homage and tribute. The kingdoms 
 of nature have been conquered, subdued, and tilled, 
 but the greater work remains the subdual of 
 man, himself, of all appetites and ambitions, all 
 desires and passions to the one end, the establish 
 ment and strengthening of the Kingdom of Fra 
 ternity. And who is watching over this process, 
 who is guiding and pushing it ever on ? God! 
 
 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. 
 
 And it is this feeling that God is in the ways 
 of men, interested in all their doings, spending 
 himself for their uplift and development, that is 
 
BROTHERHOOD IN CHRIST 127 
 
 the inspiration of that beautiful and daring con 
 ception, "Song to the Divine Mother." "This 
 song," as Markham himself tells us, "should 
 be read in the light of the deep and comforting 
 truth that the Divine Feminine as well as the 
 Divine Masculine Principle is in God that He 
 is Father-Mother, Two-in-One." So Isaiah had 
 in mind when he said, "As one whom his mother 
 comforteth, so will I comfort you." And this 
 Mother-heart is compassionate of the weariness 
 and woes of her children. Even though the chil 
 dren are blamable for their poor estate this Divine 
 Mother-Love does not fail. To this the poet 
 makes his appeal for help : 
 
 Come down, O Mother, to the helpless land, 
 That we may frame our Freedom into Fate : 
 
 Come down, and on the throne of nations stand, 
 That we may build Thy beauty in the State. 
 
 Come shining in upon our daily road, 
 
 Uphold the hero heart and light the mind; 
 
 Quicken the strong to lift the People s load, 
 And bring back buried justice to mankind. 
 
 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. 
 
 Come, Bride of God, to fill the vacant Throne, 
 Touch the dim Earth again with sacred feet; 
 
 Come, build the Holy City of white stone, 
 
 And let the whole world s gladness be complete. 
 
128 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 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. 
 
 The place of Christ in this redeemed and 
 rejuvenated world is not difficult to find. The old 
 Messianic hope glows in Markham s breast. 
 The prophecies speak to him of the growth of 
 men and nations in holiness and helpfulness. The 
 words of Jesus are the seed some day to spring up 
 and bring the abundant harvest. The golden rule 
 is not to him an "iridescent dream" in politics or 
 trade. The word of the Master will surely find 
 its fruition. It will not return to him void. But 
 he is not looking for any mechanical, materialistic 
 coming. This kingdom comes as the kingdom 
 of growth, as the kingdom of truth, quietly, without 
 noise, or show, or any such thing; none the less it 
 comes, with certainty and steady step. No power 
 can long withstand or hinder. All this is voiced 
 for us in "The Desire of Nations." As we read 
 we share in the universal joy at his coming, we are 
 glad in the gladness of the race: 
 
 Earth will go back to her lost youth, 
 
 And life grow deep and wonderful as truth, 
 
 When the wise King out of the nearing Heaven comes 
 
 To break the spell of long millenniums 
 
 To build with song again 
 
 The broken hope of men 
 
 To hush and heroize the world, 
 
 Beneath the flag of Brotherhood unfurled. 
 
BROTHERHOOD IN CHRIST 129 
 
 And He will come some day: 
 
 Already is His star upon the way! 
 
 He comes, O world, He comes! 
 
 But not with bugle-cry nor roll of doubling drums. 
 
 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 sun- bright head!" 
 
 The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice: 
 
 "Osiris comes: O tribes of Time, rejoice!" 
 
 And social architects who build the State, 
 
 Serving the Dream at citadel and gate, 
 
 Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum, 
 
 And glad quick cries will go from man to man: 
 
 Lo, He has come, our Christ the Artisan 
 
 The King who loved the lilies, He has come!" 
 
 He will arrive, our Counselor and Chief. 
 
 And with bleak faces lighted up will come 
 
 The earth-worn mothers from their martyrdom, 
 
 To tell Him of their grief. 
 
 And glad girls caroling from field and town 
 
 Will go to meet Him with the labor-crown, 
 
 The new crown woven of the heading wheat. 
 
 And men will sit down at His sacred feet; 
 
 And He will say the King 
 
 "Come, let us live the poetry we sing!" 
 
 And these, His burning words, will break the ban 
 
 Words that will grow to be, 
 
 On continent, on sea, 
 
 The rallying cry of man. 
 
 Well he knows that the true coming of the King 
 and the kingdom is the incarnation of his Spirit 
 
130 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 and truth in human hearts and organizations. It 
 is nothing magical or miraculous, it is the accept 
 ance of Christ s teachings, and the embodiment of 
 them in personal practice and in the organic Chris 
 tian state; the application of them to the work of 
 every day by men of good will. The Christ-man 
 will one day build the Christ-state, permeated by 
 the Christ-force, and a nation will be born in a day. 
 This, after all, is the secret of his coming. In pro 
 portion as these ideals are realized he comes and 
 the kingdom grows. To refuse to recognize this is 
 to bar the way, and to oppose the advance of 
 brotherliness and social peace. When men truly 
 accept Christ they become obedient to the heavenly 
 vision,they see with his eyes,believe with his beliefs, 
 and walk in his ways. Then will be seen the " new 
 Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, 
 prepared as a bride adorned for her husband": 
 
 It is a vision waiting and aware; 
 
 And you must draw it down, O men of worth 
 Draw down the New Republic held in air, 
 
 And make for it foundations on the Earth. 
 
 Some breathing of the visionary host 
 Breaks fitfully along the world s advance; 
 
 A passing glimmer touched New England s coast, 
 A whisper of its passion came on France. 
 
 Saint John beheld it as a great white throne, 
 
 Above the ages wondrous and afar; 
 Mazzini heard it as a bugle blown; 
 
 And Shelley saw it as a steadfast star. 
 
FINALE 131 
 
 The Lyric Seer beheld it as a feast, 
 
 A great white table for the People spread; 
 
 And there was knightly joy, with Christ the Priest 
 And King of Labor sitting at the head. 
 
 Ideal peaks are possible to men: 
 
 Hold to the highest, resolute and strong, 
 
 And the glad Muses will descend again, 
 
 To walk the roads of kingdoms white with song. 
 
 To Heroic Men. 
 
 VI 
 
 FINALE 
 
 If further illustration of his message, its spirit 
 and purpose, is desired it can be found in abun 
 dance in his recent book of verse. True, in this 
 new book he sings of Love, as in "Virgilia," 
 " The Homing Heart, " and other lyrics. A love it 
 is ideal, idyllic, and eternal begun in heaven, 
 and having its highest and holiest consummation 
 there when the cycle is complete. None the less 
 it is a love touched and glorified with the spirit of 
 sacrifice and service, that is at the heart of the 
 world s inbrothering. Tennyson sends his disap 
 pointed and broken lover to find death in the wars. 
 Markham sends his to find life in the service of his 
 fellows. And the difference in ideal connotes the 
 growth of the sense of humanity, the progress 
 of the brotherly spirit: 
 
 I will go the way and my song shall save me, 
 Though griefs go with me ever abreast: 
 
 I will finish the work that the strange God gave me, 
 And then pass on to rest. 
 
132 EDWIN MARKHAM 
 
 I will go back to the great world-sorrow, 
 To the millions bearing the double load 
 
 The fate of to-day and the fear of to-morrow: 
 I will taste the dust of the road. 
 
 I will go back to the pains and the pities 
 
 That break the heart of the world with moan; 
 
 I will forget in the grief of the cities 
 The burden of my own. 
 
 There in the world-grief my own grief humbles, 
 
 My own hour melts in the days to be, 
 As the wild white foam of a river crumbles, 
 
 Forgotten in the sea. Virgilia. 
 
 Here, too, will be found such social themes as 
 "The Right to Labor in Joy," "Heroes of the 
 Dream," "The Home," "The Love of Friends;" 
 such Scripture subjects as "The Song of the Magi, " 
 "Before Mary of Magdala Came," "The Way 
 to Emmaus," and others of like nature, all handled 
 with reverent freedom, with high cheer, and with 
 genuine sincerity. Indeed, the sincerity of Mr. 
 Markham is evident in all he writes. The fire of 
 conviction glows in his lines. The power of his 
 vision rests on him mightily and inspires him to 
 write, and speak, and work for the realization of 
 his dream. He is no despondent doubter, he 
 forereaches the good time that he so surely 
 sees is on the way. It may not come in per- 
 fectness in his day, but it is surely coming, and 
 he finds joy in the consciousness that he is one 
 of the humble instruments of that Eternal Truth 
 
FINALE 133 
 
 which through the ages has been calling and 
 inspiring men 
 
 To leave the low, dank thickets of the flesh 
 
 Where man meets beast and makes his lair with him; 
 
 For spirit reaches of the strenuous vast, 
 
 Where stalwart souls reap grain to make the bread 
 
 God breaketh at his tables, and is glad. 
 
 William Vaughn Moody. 
 
 The joy that our poet has in all this, the delight 
 he takes in his share of the work, his gladsome con 
 fidence that truth cannot fail and that the feet of 
 the coming kingdom are moving swiftly on the 
 way all this is voiced in that poem which incar 
 nates the very spirit of high hope and courage 
 and cheer, and so makes a fitting finale to this sur 
 vey of the timely and seerlike work of Edwin 
 Markham: 
 
 These songs will perish like the shapes of air 
 
 The singer and the songs die out forever; 
 
 But star-eyed Truth (greater than song or singer) 
 
 Sweeps hurrying on: far off she sees a gleam 
 
 Upon a peak. She cried to men of old 
 
 To build the enduring, glad Fraternal State 
 
 Cries yet through all the ruins of the world 
 
 Through Karnack, through the stones of Babylon 
 
 Cries for a moment through these fading songs. 
 
 On winged feet, a form of fadeless youth, 
 
 She goes to meet the coming centuries; 
 
 And, hurrying, snatches up some human reed, 
 
 Blows through it once her terror-bearing note, 
 
 And breaks and throws away. It is enough 
 
 If we can be a bugle at her lips, 
 
 To scatter her contagion on mankind. 
 
 These Songs Will Perish, 
 
>0imr: 
 
 / OF THE 
 
 i UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
 whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
 report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think 
 on these things. Paul. 
 
THE MAN 
 
 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL died just when he was 
 ready and ripe for his work. In the fullness of his 
 powers, when his productivity was fulfilling the 
 promise of earlier years, and at the same time was 
 the prophecy of the finer output of the future, his 
 spirit took its flight. The fate that Keats foresaw 
 and feared for himself happened to this man of 
 unquestioned poetic gifts. He vanished from our 
 sight 
 
 Before his pen had gleaned his teeming brain, 
 
 Before high-piled books in charact ry 
 Held like rich garners the full-ripened grain. 
 
 How often it is so ! Just when one is ready for 
 life and work, when one s preparation is complete, 
 when power for productivity is at its height, then 
 "the silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl is 
 broken, the pitcher is broken at the fountain, the 
 wheel is broken at the cistern." This it is that 
 makes us feel that there are in man greater 
 orations than have ever been spoken, finer pic 
 tures than have ever been painted, statues of 
 more wondrous grace and beauty than the hand 
 has ever been able to fashion, and songs more 
 
 10 137 
 
138 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 delicate, exquisite, and perfect than the lips have 
 ever uttered. 
 
 Beyond the poet s sweet dream lives 
 
 The eternal epic of the man. Whittier. 
 
 The highest and finest ideals of a man are rarely 
 or never achieved. 
 
 Ah, but a man s reach should exceed his grasp, 
 Or what s a heaven for? Browning. 
 
 The brevity of time, the imperfectness of utter 
 ance, the lack of opportunity or fit occasion, the 
 hostility of environment all this keeps back and 
 down the best that is in us. This truth it is that 
 gives significance to Browning s saying: 
 
 All I could never be, 
 All men ignored in me, 
 
 This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher 
 shaped. 
 
 And all this, as has already been suggested, finds 
 illustration in the story of Sill. What he did is only 
 just a suggestion and hint of what he hoped to do, 
 and doubtless would have done if time and oppor 
 tunity had been given him. 
 
 For the following brief biographic note we are 
 indebted to a little sketch of Sill s life that is pub 
 lished by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. as a sort of 
 preface to the first volume of his writings published 
 by them, and entitled simply Poems: 
 
 "He was born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1841, 
 
THE MAN 139 
 
 and graduated at Yale College with the class of 
 1 86 1 . He went to California not long after gradua 
 tion, and at first engaged in business, but in 1867 
 returned east with the expectation of entering the 
 ministry, and studied for a few months at the 
 Divinity School of Harvard University. He gave 
 up the purpose, however, married, and occupied 
 himself with literary work, translating Rau s 
 Mozart, holding an editorial position on the New 
 York Evening Mail, and bringing out his volume 
 of poems. 
 
 "His peculiar power in stimulating the minds 
 of others drew him into the work of teaching, and 
 he became principal of an academy in Ohio. His 
 California life, however, had given him a strong 
 attachment to the Pacific coast and a sense that his 
 health would be better there, and accordingly, 
 on receiving an invitation to a position in the 
 Oakland High School, he removed to California 
 in 1871, remaining there till 1883. In 1874 he 
 accepted the chair of English Literature in the 
 University of California, and identified himself 
 closely with the literary life which found its ex 
 pression in magazines and social organization. 
 
 "Upon his return to the east with the intention 
 of devoting himself more exclusively to literary 
 work, he began that abundant production which 
 has been hinted at, and which, anonymous for the 
 
140 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 most part, was rapidly giving him facility of exe 
 cution and drawing attention to the versatility, 
 the insight, the sympathetic power, the inspiring 
 force which had always marked his teaching and 
 bade fair to bring a large and appreciative audi 
 ence about him. He lived remote from the press 
 of active life, always close to the center of current 
 intellectual and spiritual movements, in the village 
 of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where he died after a 
 brief illness, February 27, 1887." 
 
THE NATURE AND QUALITY OF 
 HIS WRITING 
 
 I 
 
 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 IT could hardly be expected that a man born in 
 1841 and dying in 1887 could do more than give 
 us a taste of his quality and a suggestion of the 
 power that was in him. What we have of Sill 
 makes us regret keenly the brevity of his life and 
 the littleness of the opportunity that was his. And 
 yet we have reason for joy and thankfulness that 
 this man conceived his life s purpose so well, and 
 that in its brief span he gave us work of so high 
 and enduring quality. The quickly fleeting years 
 were filled with worthy effort and ennobling 
 song. As is said in the brief sketch just quoted, 
 "he lived always close to the center of current 
 intellectual and spiritual movements." His home 
 was on the uplands of life. The unclean could 
 not pass that way, nor any ravening, wolfish 
 thought find foothold or food on the high places 
 where he walked with free and fearless feet. It 
 would seem as if to the counsel of Paul, "Whatso 
 ever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
 whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are 
 
 141 
 
142 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
 things are of good report; if there be any virtue, 
 and if there be any praise, think on these things, " 
 he could truly make answer, "All this have I done 
 from my youth up." There was not time for this 
 man to round out his thought of life, or garner 
 the rich and ripened harvest of his brain. Neither 
 was there time for him to collect and collate the 
 fruitage of his brief but busy life. He was at work 
 giving expression to his deeper self, and not much 
 concerned about it after such expression. 
 
 What Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward) said 
 of him in The Century for September, 1888, is 
 surely true: 
 
 He was outside of the ceramics of the poetic art. He did 
 not give us bric-a-brac. We do not look for him in the depart 
 ment of household art decoration. He expressed himself, 
 so far as he was expressed at all, by pure inspiration. One 
 must not mistake the slight assumption of his work, its 
 modesty, its reticence, its way so like the author s own 
 of keeping in the background till sought, for the features 
 of what we are most apt to mean by minor poetry. By 
 pure quality, he was outside of this dead line. 
 
 In saying this we do not forget the incompleteness of his 
 achievement in point of some respects which go to fix a 
 man s place or his phase in the poetry of his times. His self- 
 distrust may be called almost pitiful, in view of his creative 
 quality. One might fancy that Death had his eye on that 
 shrinking, exquisite nature which had but just rooted itself 
 in our garden of poetry, and had suffered it to unfold only 
 so far as to taunt us with a singular sense of our loss and the 
 Destroyer s power. There is more pathos in his life and 
 more irony than most lives and deaths could provide material 
 
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 143 
 
 for if they tried. And this true poet and true man never 
 "tried." His life was as simple and as honest as that of a 
 tree. He could not attitudinize. He never posed. His 
 literary "effect" was the last thing he ever thought of. He 
 cared more about being a genuine man than a recognized 
 poet. . . . 
 
 I am confident that a study of his delicate, fragmentary 
 work will bring the reader at the end to the same conviction. 
 He is a truly spontaneous being; he has no "made voice"; 
 he sings because he cannot help it as the birds do, as the 
 waves do, like the winds; he is of his time, of his country, 
 and of himself. 
 
 Much of his thought first found its way to the 
 public through newspapers and magazines, and 
 much more was handed about among his friends 
 scattered broadcast with loving and lavish hand, 
 and without much thought of future preservation. 
 It has remained for those who recognize in his 
 singing an accent and a tone of universality, a mat 
 ter and manner, a note and quality that make for 
 abidingness and power, to gather up his scattered 
 and fugitive verse and give it to the public in some 
 fit and permanent form. This has been done 
 by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., in three 
 small volumes entitled respectively and in the 
 order of their publication, Poems; The Her 
 mitage, and Other Poems; Hermione, and Other 
 Poems. These are the volumes that form the 
 basis of this study. 
 
 In these sonnets and poems we find Mr. Sill sing 
 ing of life and love, of God and man, of faith and 
 
144 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 practice; and always with a note and accent 
 that lifts one into the higher realms of living. 
 Nature and human nature, life and labor are by 
 him interpreted in the light of the Spirit. As fully 
 as the prophets and priests, the singers and seers 
 of other days, he sees the meagerness and mean 
 ness, the utter valuelessness, of a life bounded by 
 the cradle and the grave. He has a message and 
 knows it such, but he knows, too, that this message 
 is not unique and singular. His is not the first and 
 only voice to frame and sing, nor will it be the last. 
 He has the wisdom to see and know that his mes 
 sage is only an echo, a note, a tone of the eternal 
 message that God has somehow put into the heart 
 of man and into the very constitution of things, 
 so that the seer and singer is only gather 
 ing up some little part of the universal mes 
 sage. The pity of it is that most of us are too dull 
 of soul and too slow of wit to hear and appreciate 
 the voice of God speaking through all the various 
 elements of the world. That our singer is sensitive 
 to the Universal Voice is evident in what he sug 
 gests in "The Singer s Confession": 
 
 Once he cried to all the hills and waters 
 And the tossing grain and tufted grasses: 
 "Take my message tell it to my brothers! 
 Stricken mute I cannot speak my message." 
 
THE PLACE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 145 
 
 What was he, that he had touched their message 
 
 Theirs, who had been chanting it forever: 
 
 With whose organ-tones the human spirit 
 
 Had eternally been overflowing! 
 
 Then, with shame that stung in cheek and forehead, 
 
 Slow he crept away. 
 
 And now he listens, 
 
 Mute and still, to hear them tell their message 
 All the holy hills and sacred waters; 
 When the sea-wind swings its evening censer, 
 Till the misty incense hides the altar 
 And the long-robed shadows, lowly kneeling. 
 
 II 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 One clear note struck by this poet concerns 
 the small part played by the individual in the up 
 ward movement, and coupled with that the assur 
 ance of eternal progress. Most of us are prone to 
 imagine that if our plan is not adopted the heavens 
 will fall. We have some social, political, or reli 
 gious panacea accept it and the millennium is at 
 hand; reject it and the Furies and Harpies will eat 
 out the heart of life. As he tells us in "The 
 Hermitage": 
 
 This little lying lens, that twists the rays, 
 
 So cheats the brain that My house, My affairs, 
 
 My hunger, or My happiness, My ache, 
 
 And My religion, fill immensity! 
 
 Yours merely dot the landscape casually. 
 
 Tis well God does not measure a man s worth 
 
 By the image on his neighbor s retina. 
 
146 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 And this is true of every man s plan, and effort, 
 and achievement. It is something in the great on 
 ward movement of the race, but it bulks not nearly 
 so large in the world life as one is apt to think it 
 does. The attitude of humility is the only attitude 
 for even the seeming great ones of earth. The 
 willingness to be the forerunners and heralds of the 
 greater men to come, to say with the Baptist, " He 
 must increase, I must decrease," is the sign of a 
 roval nature : 
 
 Fret not that the day is gone, 
 And thy task is still undone. 
 
 Yesterday a babe was born : 
 He shall do thy waiting task; 
 All thy questions he shall ask, 
 And the answers will be given, 
 Whispered lightly out of heaven. 
 
 Tis enough of joy for thee 
 
 His high service to foresee. Service. 
 
 There is truth and, in view of his own early 
 dying, there is pathos in his expression of this 
 same thought in another form. The brevity of 
 the individual life, the little that one can do 
 though he lives to the utmost span of life, the fact 
 that every man is simply a little force in the 
 onmarch and uprush of the world s mighty prog 
 ress, is clearly seen and indicated : 
 
 Why need I seek some burden small to bear 
 Before I go? 
 
THE PLACE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 147 
 
 Will not a host of nobler souls be here, 
 
 Heaven s will to do? 
 Of stronger hands, unfailing, unafraid? 
 O silly soul! what matters ray small aid 
 
 Before I go! 
 
 Tis a child s longing, on the beach at play: 
 
 "Before I go, " 
 He begs the beckoning mother, " let me stay 
 
 One shell to throw!" 
 
 Tis coming night ; the great sea climbs the shore 
 "Ah, let me toss one little pebble more, 
 
 Before I go!" A Foolish Wish. 
 
 None the less he holds that this little has its place. 
 It has its worth, only it must be rightly conceived. 
 It is part of the race movement. Then, too, he 
 seems to feel that work is not ended by the com 
 ing of death. Rather, that is the new beginning 
 and the larger opportunity. Man does not cease 
 to be a coworker with God when the clock of 
 the earthly life ceases to tick and strike. Life s 
 richest fruitage indeed, the fulfillment of its hopes 
 and yearnings is found in the days and services 
 that are to be. Here is one who is moping and 
 repining because adversities and difficulties hinder 
 and he cannot forth and toil and achieve as his 
 impelling spirit desires. Then 
 
 Suddenly there came a day 
 When he flung his gloom away. 
 Something hinted help was near: 
 Winds were fresh and sky was clear; 
 
148 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Light he stepped, and firmly planned, 
 
 Some good news was close at hand 
 
 Truly: for when day was done, 
 
 He was lying all alone, 
 
 Fretted pulse had ceased to beat, 
 
 Very still were hands and feet, 
 
 And the robins through the long 
 
 Twilight sang his slumber song. Fulfillment. 
 
 Ill 
 
 SELF OR SERVICE 
 
 In Mr. Sill s philosophy, as in his poetry, the 
 chief thing is life. To him life is opportunity. 
 The sacredness of the common ways and the rich 
 implications of ordinary things is with him a firm 
 faith. In his singing is a strong and earnest call 
 to men to rightly conceive their life and its work. 
 There is no room in his thought for the man who 
 would repine and wail, and seclude himself 
 from the activities and duties, the oppositions and 
 sorrows of life. The sacredness and dignity of 
 the world and its work comes clearly to view in 
 his poems. He feels with Mrs. Browning that 
 
 Earth s crammed with heaven, 
 And every common bush aflame with God. 
 
 Perhaps the fullest treatment of this truth is 
 found in the poem that gives its name to one of the 
 little volumes that we are considering "The 
 Hermitage." The slender thread of romance that 
 runs through the poem may be briefly stated. A 
 
SELF OR SERVICE 149 
 
 man loves and at times feels that his love is recip 
 rocated, but a ring glistening on the finger of his 
 beloved causes him to think that she has given 
 herself to another, and so seals his lips. In disap 
 pointment and bitterness of spirit he flings him 
 self out of the towns and cities, away from the 
 haunts of men, away from all the engagements, 
 business, and duties of modern life; leaves the 
 East, journeys to the sunny heights of the Cali 
 fornia mountains. There in quietness and isola 
 tion, neither troubled nor troubling, he will lead 
 and live his life: 
 
 Old World old, foolish, wicked World farewell! 
 
 I will go seek in far-off lands 
 
 Some quiet corner, where my years shall be 
 
 Still as the shadow of a brooding bird 
 
 That stirs but with her heart-beats. Far, unheard 
 
 May wrangle on the noisy human host, 
 
 While I will face my Life, that silent ghost, 
 
 And force it speak what it would have with me. 
 
 He will give himself to the study of nature; 
 grow wise through communion and fellowship; 
 become intellectually rich and morally strong 
 by this intimate, first-hand contact with the 
 elemental things. Thus he thinks he will be ready 
 for the larger life of the future: 
 
 So shall it be, that, when I stand 
 On that next planet s ruddy-shimmering strand, 
 I shall not seem a pert and forward child 
 Seeking to dabble in abstruser lore 
 
150 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 With alphabet unlearned, who in disgrace 
 
 Returns, upon his primer yet to pore 
 
 But those examiners, all wise and mild, 
 
 Shall gently lead me to my place, 
 
 As one that faithfully did trace 
 
 These simpler earthly records o er and o er. 
 
 Of course, it does not satisfy. It pales and palls 
 after a while. The longing for activity, the ques 
 tions of duty to his kind come to perplex and dis 
 turb him. Just then, when he is restless, and 
 questioning if, after all, he has not made a grievous 
 blunder, he gets a glimpse in a near-by town of a 
 face and figure that remind him of his beloved. 
 What is she doing there ? Is she seeking him ? 
 Is it all a dream ? A letter brings her to him as 
 he is sick and despairing, and he learns that the 
 ring that sealed his lips was a brother s gift. 
 
 The story is, as I have said, only a slender 
 thread on which the poet strings the precious pearls 
 of his thought concerning the worth and wealth 
 of the ordinary life. For be it remembered that 
 this man was no petted and pampered favorite 
 of society; not a man of ease, and wealth, and 
 leisure. No, his was just 
 
 A life, a common, cleanly, quiet life, 
 Full of good citizenship and repute, 
 New, but with promise of prosperity, 
 A well-bred, fair, young-gentlemanly life. 
 
 At first the youth rejoices in his isolation. He 
 thinks that he is free, that he has found the secret 
 
SELF OR SERVICE 151 
 
 of growth, and strength, and wisdom. And the 
 poet lets him think and speak out his thought, 
 and thereby he shows us one of the great fallacies 
 of life: 
 
 Man rises best alone: 
 
 Upward his thoughts stream, like the leaping flame, 
 
 Whose base is tempest-blown; 
 
 Upward and skyward, since from thence they came, 
 
 And thither they must flow. 
 
 If linked in threes, and fives, 
 
 However heavenward the spirit strives, 
 
 The lowest stature draws the highest down 
 
 The king must keep the level of the clown. 
 
 The grosser matter has the greater power 
 
 In all attraction; every hour 
 
 We slide and slip to lower scales, 
 
 Till weary aspiration fails, 
 
 And that keen fire which might have pierced the skies 
 
 Is quenched and killed in one another s eyes. 
 
 Scattered through the meditations of this lonely 
 man are gems of truth shining out despite the 
 isolation and the imperfect type of life to which 
 he has committed himself; as when he says: 
 
 If men but knew the mazes of the brain 
 And all its crowded pictures, they would need 
 No Louvre or Vatican: behind our brows 
 Intricate galleries are built, whose walls 
 Are rich with all the splendors of a life. 
 
 And, again, how clearly does he point out the 
 faithful witness in the human heart courageous 
 conscience, that will not be frightened or stilled, 
 
152 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 that follows man as his shadow, that speaks to 
 him of truth and duty, morning, noon, and mid 
 night! 
 
 All the long nights those memory-haunted nights, 
 When sleepless conscience would not let me sleep, 
 But stung, and stung, and pointed to the world 
 Which like a coward I had left behind. 
 
 And, as conscience pricks and stings, the clouded 
 judgment begins to clear. Things once more 
 appear in true proportion and in right relations. 
 He is able to see the fallacy in his own partial and 
 selfish reasoning. The insufficiency of the isolated 
 and self-full life is clearly seen. The truth that 
 even such power, and thought, and vision as he 
 had were an inheritance from the race flashed 
 through his brain, and made him say: 
 
 I scorned books: to those same books 
 I owe the power to scorn them. 
 
 I despised 
 
 Men : from themselves I drew the pure ideal 
 By which to measure them. 
 
 At woman s love 
 I laughed: but to that love I owe 
 The hunger for a more abiding love. 
 
 What do I here alone? 
 
 Unmarried to the steel, the flint is cold: 
 Strike one to the other, and they wake in fire. 
 
 A solitary fagot will not burn: 
 Bring two, and cheerily the flame ascends. 
 Alone, man is a lifeless stone; or lies 
 A charring ember, smoldering into ash. 
 
SELF OR SERVICE 153 
 
 Also he begins to see that he has some part in 
 the world s work some part that will not be done 
 save as he does it. He has no right to shirk. 
 God truly guides, controls, and works, but does 
 so through men whom he has created and fitted 
 for the labor and duty of life: 
 
 Shame! that a man with hand and brain 
 Should, like a lovelorn girl, complain, 
 Rhyming his dainty woes anew, 
 When there is honest work to do! 
 
 What work, what work? Is God not wise 
 
 To rule the world He could devise? 
 
 Yet see thou, though the realm be His, 
 
 He governs it by deputies. 
 
 Enough to know of Chance and Luck, 
 
 The stroke we choose to strike is struck; 
 
 The deed we slight will slighted be, 
 
 In spite of all Necessity. 
 
 The Parcae s web of good and ill 
 
 They weave with human shuttles still, 
 
 And fate is fate through man s free will. 
 
 It is a keen, true, and well-merited rebuke that 
 the selfish hermit receives from the lips of the 
 woman he loved and loves, but whom he left 
 without a word of explanation, though, as she tells 
 him, he must have known her love: 
 
 "I am come, because you called to me to come. 
 What were all other voices when I heard 
 The voice of my own soul s soul call to me? 
 You knew I loved you oh, you must have known! 
 Was it a noble thing to do, you think, 
 ii 
 
154 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 To leave a lonely girl to die down there 
 
 In the great empty world, and come up here 
 
 To make a martyr s pillar of your pride? 
 
 There has been nobler work done, there in the world, 
 
 Than you have done this year!" 
 
 Then cried the man: 
 
 "O God, I am not worthy of thy gifts! 
 
 Let me find penance, till, years hence, perchance, 
 
 Made pure by toil, and scourged with pain and prayer" 
 
 Then a voice answered through His creature s lips, 
 
 "God asks no penance but a better life* 
 
 He purifies by pain He only; tis 
 
 A remedy too dangerous for our 
 
 Blind pharmacy." 
 
 It is the same truth that is taught by Tennyson 
 in "The Palace of Art." Some seek isolation 
 because of pride. They think themselves supe 
 rior, they will not mingle with the common herd. 
 They are better than their fellows. They will 
 give themselves to the heights of intellectual and 
 artistic contemplation. Others flee the world 
 and its work because they think it has used them 
 ill. They have been disappointed, opposed, unap 
 preciated. So they will shake its dust from their 
 feet. They will not concern themselves with its 
 problems, its needs, or its work. Either way lies 
 selfishness and sin. All the experiences of life 
 are for man s enrichment and development. His 
 fellows need him, and not less he needs his fellows. 
 "God saw that it was not good for man to be 
 
SELF OR SERVICE 155 
 
 alone" is a truth wider in its range than is usually 
 considered. And this is the truth that our poet 
 has grasped and worked out in "The Hermitage." 
 Whatever life brings, man s place is with his fel 
 lows, weeping and rejoicing, and striving and 
 toiling with them to hasten the coming of the 
 time when 
 
 the whole round world shall every way 
 Be bound with chains of gold about the feet of God. 
 
ILLUSTRATION OF CHRISTIAN 
 
 INFLUENCE 
 
 I 
 
 IN GENERAL 
 
 IN seeking for illustrations of the influence of 
 Christian thought upon the thought and work 
 of this poet, we will not find them, as in Gilder, 
 in a large and free dealing with fundamental 
 Christian truths. For instance, there is in Sill 
 no such sustained attention as we find in 
 Gilder to such themes as Christ, Faith, and 
 Immortality. They are touched, hinted at, sug 
 gested, but there is nothing like a full and 
 adequate treatment. Neither will we find in our 
 author that devotion to one main theme, and 
 absorption in it its elucidation and application 
 in many ways and to all realms of life that is so 
 characteristic a feature of Markham. Rather 
 will it be found that his whole thinking is suffused 
 with the spirit and truth of Christianity. And 
 while he may not definitely or specifically sing of 
 these truths, yet whatever he touches is colored 
 with the truth and faith that beats with his blood 
 and is warp and woof of his life. That this is 
 
 so is evident from what has already been noted 
 
 156 
 
THE SENSE OF GOD 157 
 
 concerning "The Hermitage." The old monastic 
 conception of life was, to say the least, an imperfect 
 representation of real religion. The Baptist was 
 an ascetic, but Jesus was a man of the villages and 
 towns, a frequenter of weddings and feasts. True 
 Christianity is a social brotherhood and has an 
 outlook on the entirety of life. It teaches that all 
 life s experiences rightly received and rightly used 
 will make for individual uplift and social better 
 ment. Paul must not whine and take himself 
 from the work of life because of some disappoint 
 ment, or imperfect equipment for life and work. 
 No, his business is so to relate himself to this expe 
 rience that his use of it shall be a source of inspi 
 ration and a tower of strength to his fellows! 
 And this is the spiritual significance of "The 
 Hermitage." 
 
 II 
 
 THE SENSE OF GOD 
 
 It is in some such way as this that we get at the 
 influence of God upon our author. One will not 
 find very many direct treatments of this theme, 
 it is true; but none the less the consciousness of 
 God, the sense of his presence, the worth of the 
 worshipful and spiritual instinct, all this is implicit 
 in much that Mr. Sill has written. Some words 
 let fall by the hermit in his musings evidence this. 
 
158 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 What a beautiful metaphor is that in which he 
 speaks of the coming and going of the image of 
 God in human hearts! 
 
 The voice of my wild brook is marvelous; 
 Leaning above it from a jutting rock 
 To watch the image of my face, that forms 
 And breaks, and forms again (as the image of God 
 Is broken and regathered in a soul), . . . 
 
 The Hermitage. 
 
 Thus he teaches the truth of the inshining and out 
 shining of God, when the soul of man is in har 
 mony and peace with him, and the obscuring of 
 that image by the turmoil and trouble, the murk 
 and dark of sin. We seek for rest and peace, and 
 find it not. We are worried, distressed, and discon 
 tented, and find no quiet for our souls. We forget 
 that God is the secret and the source of true con 
 tentment. But our poet forgets not. A quiet 
 mind that trusts in God finds the rest that thou 
 sands vainly seek: 
 
 One key is solitude, and silence one, 
 And one a quiet mind, content to rest 
 In God s sufficiency, and take His world, 
 Not dabbling all the Master s work to death 
 With our small interference. God is God. 
 
 The Hermitage. 
 
 The same great and needful lesson is inculcated 
 in some lines that are in truth a fine comment on 
 the text, "All things work together for good to them 
 that love God. " The poet is singing of the varied 
 
THE SENSE OF GOD 159 
 
 and changeful experiences that come to us as we 
 pass on our checkered way the loves and griefs, 
 the hopes and fears, the pains, the burdens, and 
 the tangled threads of life that at the time seem 
 harsh, inexplicable, and incapable of unravelment. 
 What is the rich, full meaning and outcome of all 
 this ? Hear him: 
 
 But loves and hopes have left us in their place, 
 Thank God! a gentle grace, 
 A patience, a belief in His good time, 
 Worth more than all Earth s joys to which we climb. 
 
 Retrospect. 
 
 And how exquisitely is expressed the soul s need 
 for God, the truth that he and he only is the satis 
 fying portion in time and in eternity, in "The 
 Things that Will Not Die"! Here, one who is on 
 the eternal borderland is looking earthward and 
 recounting the things that will abide, and that he 
 is glad will abide everywhere and forever. The 
 vision fills his soul with the sense of beauty and 
 peace, and in deep contentment he sings : 
 
 And it is well that when these feet have pressed 
 The outward path from earth, twill not seem sad 
 
 To them that stay; but they who love me best 
 Will be most glad 
 That such a long unquiet now has had, 
 
 At last, a gift of perfect peace and rest. 
 
 His consciousness of the Fatherhood and lov- 
 ingness of God is indicated and voiced in two 
 poems, the one a depiction of an Eastern winter 
 
160 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 with its bleak and bitter winds that bite and 
 chill and shrivel body and mind. He longs for 
 the genial clime that he has known, with its 
 warmth and cheer and light, and with that mental 
 and spiritual warmth and enlargement that he 
 images as coming through the influence of the 
 sunnier clime: 
 
 Ah, give me back the clime I know 
 Where all the year geraniums blow, 
 And hyacinth-buds bloom white for snow; 
 
 Where man may let earth s beauty thaw 
 The wintry creed which Calvin saw, 
 That God is only Power and Law; 
 
 And out of Nature s bible prove, 
 That here below as there above 
 Our Maker Father God is Love. 
 
 Eastern Winter. 
 
 The other is a simple prayer; a prayer for 
 the Father s love and guidance and care; a 
 prayer that seems so human and real that it must 
 come forth of a heart that felt its need of the 
 Father s presence and comfort and love: 
 
 Oh, love us, for we love thee, Maker God! 
 
 And would creep near thy hand, 
 And call thee "Father, Father," from the sod 
 
 Where by our graves we stand, 
 And pray to touch, fearless of scorn or blame, 
 Thy garment s hem, which Truth and Good we name. 
 
 A Prayer. 
 
 How many of us professing to be children of 
 faith are yet all our lifetime in bondage to doubt! 
 
THE SENSE OF GOD 161 
 
 How often, asserting with our lips that we believe 
 in God, do our actions and worriments express 
 disbelief in the ways and works of God! We are 
 fearful of ourselves, distrustful of our fellows, and 
 not quite sure of God. There is a false view of 
 things current even in the religious world. Lis 
 tening to much of the speaking and preaching of 
 to-day, one would think that the world-movement 
 was making for evil; that men were more and 
 more under the sway and power of sin; that the 
 cause of truth and righteousness was waning; that 
 God had abdicated, and that the devil was seated 
 on the throne of the universe. It is rank atheism. 
 This phase of thought was understood by Sill, and 
 he has depicted it in "Roland" and shown its 
 fallacy. The man is full of foolish fear, unfaith, 
 and unrest. His whole soul is vexed, disturbed, 
 and turbulent. He is wrong and hence every 
 thing is twisted and awry. His salvation comes 
 by virtue of the fact that like Paul he "was not 
 disobedient unto the heavenly vision": 
 
 He knew not where the vision fell, 
 
 Only all things grew plain 
 As if some thatch broke through and let 
 
 A sunbeam cross his brain. 
 
 In beauty flushed the morning light, 
 
 With blessing dropped the rain, 
 All creatures were to him most fair, 
 
 Nor anything in vain. 
 
162 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 He breathed the space that links the stars, 
 
 He rested on God s arm 
 A man unmoved by accident, 
 
 Untouched by any harm. 
 
 The weary doubt if all is good, 
 
 The doubt if all is ill, 
 He left to Him who leaves to us 
 
 To know that all is well. 
 
 The vision is an open one. Any man who wills 
 may see it; and when all men see it, then the 
 "tired earth will taste heaven s honey-dew of 
 rest." 
 
 That God is the living God, in touch with men 
 and affairs to-day, interested in the world life, able 
 to reveal himself in counsel, warning, and inspi 
 ration to the individual, is an evident faith of our 
 author. One brief poem is sufficient illustration 
 of this. It is so simple, so sure, and so perfect that 
 nothing else is needed to certify the influence of 
 this truth upon him who wrote it. Its voice is 
 the utterance of one who like Elijah has tarried 
 in the mount and heard for himself who has 
 felt and known. Its conclusion is : 
 
 Let the noisy crowd go by: 
 
 In thy lonely watch on high, 
 
 Far from the chattering tongues of men, 
 
 Sitting above their call or ken, 
 
 Free from links of manner and form 
 
 Thou shalt learn of the winge"d storm 
 
 God shall speak to thee out of the sky. 
 
 Solitudt. 
 
THE SENSE OF GOD 163 
 
 There is a poem that reveals Mr. Sill s thought 
 about Sunday and the worth of worship that ought 
 not to be omitted. It is specially valuable in this 
 day when the attempt is made, by those who ought 
 to know better, to destroy the essential character 
 istics of this day. Too long we have allowed the 
 opponents of the day to delude men with the 
 notion that Sunday was a day dull, dreary, and 
 forbidding; that worship was tedious and weari 
 some. The reverse may be true, ought to be true, 
 and will be true when we hold and embody the 
 true ideal. Sunday ought to be the brightest and 
 cheeriest day of the seven, and will be made such 
 when Christianity rightly conceives and practices 
 its high privilege of gladsome, cheery, inspira 
 tional prayer and praise. This is the ideal that 
 our poet depicts, and the sooner it is realized the 
 better for mankind: 
 
 SUNDAY 
 
 Not a dread cavern, hoar with damp and mold, 
 Where I must creep, and in the dark and cold 
 
 Offer some awful incense at a shrine 
 
 That hath no more divine 
 Than that tis far from life, and stern, and old; 
 
 But a bright hilltop in the breezy air, 
 Full of the morning freshness high and clear, 
 
 Where I may climb and drink the pure, new day, 
 
 And see where winds away 
 The path that God would send me, shining fair. 
 
164 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 III 
 
 THE DIGNITY AND WORTH OF LIFE 
 
 As has elsewhere been noted, a chief emphasis 
 of Mr. Sill is upon life the average, everyday, 
 common life and duty of man. Many of his poems 
 treat of this directly, and others by way of sugges 
 tion and implication. There is a group of poems, 
 small in number but of great value, that treats 
 of the dignity, the sacredness, and the high quality 
 of every day, and of the "day s work." They 
 seem to me to have caught at least something of 
 their inspiration from the Master s parables of 
 "the pounds" and "the talents." We think our 
 poor brief day will soon be sped, and that it is not 
 worth while to make much effort. The time is 
 so short, the chance so limited, the margin of 
 opportunity so meager! We are thinking of the 
 brevity of time and the swift coming of death. 
 Our poet thinks of life and the richness of the 
 present hour. The opportunity of to-day is the 
 truth that cheers and inspires him as he faces all 
 the facts, and so with gay cheer and confidence 
 he cries: 
 
 Let it come, when come it must; 
 But To- Day from out the dust 
 Blooms and brightens like a flower, 
 Fair with love, and faith, and power. 
 
 Carpe Diem. 
 
DIGNITY AND WORTH OF LIFE 165 
 
 And the same truth, only wider and deeper in 
 its reach, is unfolded in what is perhaps one of the 
 best known of Mr. Sill s poems, "Life." We 
 want life to be a success. We fancy, all too often, 
 that there will come to us some dramatic possi 
 bility, some spectacular moment, some great 
 thing to be done at a stroke! Sometimes that is 
 true, but rarely. The law is otherwise. It is the 
 old fable of the hare and the tortoise. The men 
 who rightly esteem the days as they come and go, 
 who see the possibility that sleeps in the common 
 and disregarded, who make the most and best of 
 these things that others waste, are the men who 
 come to achievement and fruition. As to-day, in 
 manufactures, fortunes are found in what not long 
 since was cast out as waste and void, so the for 
 tune of life may be found in the moments and days 
 that we so lightly esteem and so carelessly waste: 
 
 Forenoon and afternoon and night, Forenoon, 
 And afternoon, and night, Forenoon, and what! 
 The empty song repeats itself. No more? 
 Yea, that is Life: make this forenoon sublime, 
 This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer, 
 And Time is conquered, and thy crown is won. 
 
 And how true it is that when in the battle of life 
 the conflict grows hard and dangers thicken, 
 then we grow frightened and cowardly! We seek 
 some excuse, some reason for going to the rear, 
 for dropping out of sight: we are not just well 
 
166 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 equipped for this battle, we have not the place in 
 the line that we think we ought to have, we have 
 not been appreciated nor our efforts thus far 
 rightly regarded or rewarded. The battle of 
 life roars and rages all about; it s a good time to 
 slip away under cover of the cloud of smoke, and 
 ease our conscience by some such excuse as has 
 been noted. The truth is we are wanting in sol 
 dierly courage and character. The true warrior is 
 he who responds to his commander s order, "Go 
 in anywhere, there s beautiful fighting all along the 
 line." A man s opportunity is not in his position, 
 his weaponry, or his friendships, but in himself. 
 The intrepidity, the cheer, the resourcefulness, 
 the stout-heartedness of the true soldier will repair 
 all damage, will overleap all obstacles, will forge 
 fit weaponry, will find or make its own oppor 
 tunity, and against all odds will snatch victory 
 out of the jaws of defeat. The sons of the King 
 in the battle and work of life are no dawdling, 
 complaining, pessimistic shirkers and deserters! 
 They partake the spirit, and cheer, and confidence 
 of the Father, and the spirit in them makes mighty 
 in their hearts the weaponry that less high-souled 
 men cast aside as worthless and useless. All this 
 Mr. Sill depicts most vividly in a little poem 
 instinct with the spirit of struggle and suffused 
 with the atmosphere of battle. The craven com- 
 
DIGNITY AND WORTH OF LIFE 167 
 
 plains of his sword, breaks and flings away, and 
 like a coward skulks from the fight: 
 
 Then came the king s son, wounded, sore bestead, 
 And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, 
 Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, 
 And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout 
 Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down, 
 And saved a great cause that heroic day. 
 
 Opportunity. 
 
 Another group of songs there is that is rich 
 in the high moral courage that is so character 
 istic a quality of the New Testament. All 
 through these verses one catches the tones of a 
 manly voice calling upon his fellows in the very 
 spirit of high Christian devotion and chivalry to 
 give themselves to the work of life with earnest 
 ness, loyalty, and endurance to the last. It is this 
 truth that enables him to see that suicide is cow 
 ardice, the last unavailing refuge of a moral weak 
 ling; even the outcasts on the farther shore will 
 point the finger of scorn at this shirker of life s 
 problems as they say, "See the wretch that dared 
 not live!" No wonder that the prayer for death is 
 the most blind and foolish of prayers. No wonder 
 that he who rushes on death before his time is reck 
 oned among the cravens and cowards of the race: 
 
 Blindest and most frantic prayer, 
 
 Clutching at a senseless boon, 
 His that begs, in mad despair, 
 
 Death to come ; he comes so soon ! 
 
 The Deserter. 
 
i68 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 And as one should not hasten the hour of his 
 departure, even so he need have no fear of the com 
 ing of that hour. It is not his to hasten or to 
 hinder. His it is to meet the varied experiences of 
 time with the high courage of the inner life. He 
 is not to whimper or whine, to fear or tremble, to 
 grow bitter or morose. Rather with face of cheer 
 and heart of hope is he to play a man s part and 
 do a man s work in a manly way in this world, 
 which of divine intent is made up of sunshine and 
 shadow, of prosperity and adversity, of war and 
 peace: 
 
 Let me lift up my head 
 And firmly, as with inner courage, tread 
 Mine own appointed way, on mandates high. 
 
 Let me have lived my life, not cowered until 
 The unhindered and unhastened hour was here. 
 So soon what is there in the world to fear? 
 
 "Quern Metui Moritura?" 
 
 With keen insight into the ways of men he 
 reveals in "Dare You?" the hemispheres that 
 must be united in order that moral courage may 
 be complete and full-orbed. Shrewdly he sees 
 into the sophistry of man whereby he is wont to 
 think that his courage is the only courage, and that 
 the other man s way is the way of cowardice. 
 Under guise of a conversation between doubting 
 Thomas and loving John this truth shines clear. 
 Thomas the doubter thinks that his attitude 
 
DIGNITY AND WORTH OF LIFE 169 
 
 betokens the highest quality of courage, and doubt 
 less thinks himself the very embodiment of moral 
 heroism, and so he asks: 
 
 "Tell me now, John, dare you be 
 One of the minority? 
 To be lonely in your thought, 
 Never visited nor sought, 
 Shunned with secret shrug, to go 
 Through the world esteemed its foe? 
 
 But John has a question ready. He realizes 
 that there is courage not only in the one who says, 
 "I doubt," but that it ofttimes requires an even 
 greater courage to say, " I believe. " If it requires 
 courage to be singular and alone, so also, and 
 possibly more so, to be one of the common crowd 
 and to be esteemed as possessing no originality 
 or initiative, just because one sees that the com 
 mon conviction and view is, after all, the wise 
 and the true. And so he turns with his counter 
 question: 
 
 "Thomas, do you dare to be 
 
 Of the great majority? 
 
 To be only, as the rest, 
 
 With Heaven s common comforts blessed; 
 
 To accept, in humble part, 
 
 Truth that shines on every heart?" 
 
 But moral courage must at times incarnate itself 
 in some mighty reformer some man who sees 
 the world s woe and need, and has clear vision of at 
 
 12 
 
170 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 least some phase of the remedy; some Luther who 
 will stand against ecclesiastical and civil power; 
 some Garrison who "will not retract or equivocate, 
 and who will be heard"; some Neal Dow about 
 whom the temperance hosts can rally. When such 
 a man comes he will not be shaken in his purpose. 
 The very spirit of the gospel, in its opposition to 
 intrenched and buttressed wrong, in its hatred 
 of the sin and hoary customs that oppress and 
 destroy, in its hunger for and devotion to the 
 Righteousness that uplifts and develops, is seen in 
 our poet s conception of "The Reformer": 
 
 Before the monstrous wrong he sets him down 
 One man against a stone-walled city of sin. 
 
 Let him lie down and die: what is the right, 
 And where is justice, in a world like this? 
 But by and by, earth shakes herself, impatient; 
 And down, in one great roar of ruin, crash 
 Watchtower and citadel and battlements. 
 When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldier 
 Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly 
 stars. 
 
 And in his characterization and unfoldment of 
 the truth of life the poet has not forgotten to put 
 due emphasis upon the need of service and 
 unselfish thoughtfulness for others. This phase 
 of his thought has been already touched upon in 
 what has been said concerning his poems entitled 
 "Service" and "The Singer s Confession." It 
 
DIGNITY AND WORTH OF LIFE 171 
 
 only remains to say that in "Sibylline Bartering" 
 there shines out the truth that if one would have 
 secure friendships, and with these all the happi 
 ness and joy of life, he must pay the price and 
 slay self-love. And the longer he delays the greater 
 the price, for at the end self-love must die or friends 
 and joy will be lacking. One who bickers and 
 barters and refuses only increases the cost, for 
 what at last he gets is only what he might have had 
 from youth up if he had been willing to pay what 
 in the end he had to pay: 
 
 Ready now to pay 
 The perfect love that leaves no self to slay! 
 
 And in "The Secret" we see that the way to 
 have the glory and the joy of life, to feel the wonder 
 and beauty, the wealth and worth of the world, 
 of men, of God the way into the very center 
 and heart of life is to be forgetful of self and be 
 immersed in unselfish thought and worthy work. 
 The man who selfishly seeks the joy and power of 
 earth misses it, while he who busies himself with 
 humble duties, and fills each day with simple 
 neighborly kindnesses, rejoices in its light and 
 warmth : 
 
 The blessing came because it was not sought; 
 There was no care if thou wert blest or not : 
 The beauty and the wonder all thy thought,,-- 
 Thyself forgot. 
 
172 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 IV 
 
 THINGS OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 Though not treated with anything like adequate- 
 ness, yet it is clear that some of the great beliefs 
 of Christendom strongly influenced his thinking. 
 Had he lived longer there is every reason to believe 
 that these themes would have received fuller 
 recognition, and their influence on his verse would 
 have been more distinctly manifest. What 
 Romanes so happily calls "the ripening expe 
 rience of life" would almost of necessity have 
 directed his pen in these channels. It is clear 
 from what he has written that to Mr. Sill religion 
 was a matter of spirit and life, not of letter or sym 
 bol. He tells us that once in the early hours of the 
 day he happened in a dim and ghostly sort of 
 chapel where old monks read and the people 
 listened dreamily and drowsily. Some one shifted 
 a shutter and the morning light gleamed upon the 
 reader and the Word, and still he droned by the 
 taper s light and the people stirred not from their 
 listless dozing: 
 
 And I wondered that, tinder that morning ray, 
 
 When night and shadow were scattered away, 
 
 The monk should bow his locks of white 
 
 By a taper s feebly flickering light 
 
 Should pore, and pore, and never seem 
 
 To notice the golden morning-beam. Morning. 
 
THINGS OF THE SPIRIT 173 
 
 All of which is a parable emphasizing the worth- 
 lessness of form, the negativeness of dull acquies 
 cence in customs and ways and beliefs of the 
 past. Religion is of the day. Like the sun in 
 the heavens, it is to illumine and warm, to cheer 
 and stir an active and vital principle in the 
 world s life. 
 
 That he feels the necessity of faith, and knows 
 the value of trust in God in such a world as this, 
 is evident in the little suggestions, the turns of ex 
 pression, that may be found scattered through 
 many of his writings. In some there is the clear 
 expression of this necessity. Life to him 
 would be utterly inexplicable on any atheistic basis. 
 God present, wise, loving, and Fatherly is 
 a necessity of rational thought. In "Five Lives" 
 he launches a shrewd bit of sarcasm against the 
 ponderous and inflated self-conceit of the various 
 schools of thought that would reduce the world 
 to dull, dead matter, devoid of a divine presence, 
 a divine intent, and a divine control. It is true 
 our poet s faith is not always vivid, and strong, 
 and resolute. Sometimes, indeed, it halts and 
 wavers and falters when it ought to walk with firm 
 footing; as when he says: 
 
 For life is a blindfold game, and the Voice from view is hid. 
 I face him as best I can, still groping, here and there, 
 For the hand that has touched me lightly, the lips that have 
 said, "Declare!" Blindfold. 
 
174 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Still, though feeble and flickering, it is faith 
 faith that may grow, and indeed does grow, into 
 something more robust and vigorous. He hears 
 the low branches of the forest trees complain of the 
 darkness and the gloom, of the grim and frightful 
 shadows that they seem to see. But he hears as 
 well the tall tree tops lifting themselves skyward 
 and heralding the swift, sure coming of the dawn. 
 It is an image of life a suggestion of what the voice 
 of experience speaks in the recesses of the soul : 
 
 So Life stands, with a twilight world around; 
 
 Faith turned serenely to the steadfast sky, 
 Still answering the heart that sweeps the ground, 
 Sobbing in fear, and tossing restlessly 
 
 "Hush, hush! The Dawn breaks o er the Eastern sea, 
 Tis but thine own dim shadow troubling thee." 
 
 Faith. 
 
 And how beautifully and melodiously does he 
 sing of the worth of simple and complete trust and 
 confidence! We weary and worry our lives away in 
 foolish fear and restless discontent, when One has 
 said, "Cast all your care upon him; for he careth 
 for you": 
 
 Be still and sleep, my soul! 
 
 Now gentle-footed Night 
 In softly shadowed stole 
 
 Holds all the day from sight. 
 
 Thou hast no need to wake, 
 
 Thou art no sentinel; 
 Love all the care will take, 
 
 And Wisdom watcheth well. Wiegenlied. 
 
1 KINGS OF THE SPIRIT 175 
 
 That he knows the Christian truth of the worth 
 of privation and pain, adversity and sorrow, temp 
 tation and trial, in the development of spiritual 
 character is very evident. A life of smoothness, 
 free from all toil and struggle, would leave us 
 physically ungirt, morally weak, and would make 
 for a flabby spirituality. The man who faces and 
 fights his temptations and difficulties, who sur 
 mounts obstacles, who makes of hindrances and 
 oppositions a solid pathway for his feet, is the man 
 who will ultimately rise 
 
 on stepping-stones 
 Of his dead self to higher things. 
 
 This is clearly shown in "Tempted" and in 
 "Fertility." Our poet has not forgotten that the 
 crown of life is awarded to the tried and tempted 
 one who is also the conquering one. The influ 
 ence of the biblical conception of life as a moral 
 warfare, with the reward for the valiant and 
 faithful soldier of truth and righteousness is 
 clearly evident in his writings: 
 
 Patience, O weary heart! 
 
 Let all thy sparkling hours depart, 
 
 And all thy hopes be withered with the frost, 
 
 And every effort tempest- tost 
 
 So, when all life s green leaves 
 Are fallen, and moldered underneath the sod, 
 Thou shalt go not too lightly to thy God, 
 
 But heavy with full sheaves. Fertility. 
 
176 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Nowhere is the influence of Christian truth and 
 teaching more evident than in our author s out 
 look upon the future. Faith in immortality is 
 fresh and full and vigorous. Death is luminous 
 in the light of the immortal hope. Life is explica 
 ble only on the certainty of the richer life to come. 
 We may not hear any voice, we must make the 
 journey alone, yet the only permissible mood is 
 the mood of hope and faith and courage: 
 
 Into the silent, starless Night before us, 
 
 Naked we glide: 
 No hand has mapped the constellations o er us, 
 
 No comrade at our side, 
 
 No chart, no guide. 
 
 Yet fearless toward that midnight, black and hollow, 
 
 Our footsteps fare: 
 The beckoning of a Father s hand we follow 
 
 His love alone is there, 
 
 No curse, no care. The Future. 
 
 Even Nature is a revelation of the truth of the 
 future. The God who cares for the natural world, 
 who speeds the planets on their way, who garbs 
 the earth with beauty, who guides the "certain 
 flight" of the wood and water fowl, will surely be 
 mindful of his children. All this he believes 
 the earth whispers and the heavens sing this 
 truth : 
 
 My Comforters! Yea, why not mine? 
 The power that kindled you doth shine, 
 In man, a mastery divine; 
 
THINGS OF THE SPIRIT 177 
 
 That Love which throbs in every star, 
 And quickens all the worlds afar, 
 Beats warmer where his children are. 
 
 The shadow of the wings of Death 
 Broods over us; we feel his breath: 
 "Resurgam" still the spirit saith. Starlight. 
 
 That personal identity is not lost; that immor 
 tality is not vague and shadowy, but clear and 
 definite, is the firm faith of Mr. Sill. In that future 
 life he expects to know and to be known. The 
 things that we see are only half the truth, and 
 hardly that. Even on the earth and in time the 
 mightiest forces are the unseen, and the deepest 
 truths are those that we must accept even while 
 we do not comprehend their full import. To 
 deny the eternal, personal life because we do 
 not see or touch it is to do violence to the 
 very principles by which we live and act on 
 the earth: 
 
 Because he never conies and stands 
 
 And stretches out to me both hands, 
 
 Because he never leans before 
 
 The gate, when I set wide the door 
 
 At morning, nor is ever found 
 
 Just at my side when I turn round, 
 
 Half thinking I shall meet his eyes, 
 
 From watching the broad moon-globe rise, 
 
 For all this, shall I homage pay 
 
 To Death, grow cold of heart, and say: 
 
 "He perished, and has ceased to be; 
 
 Another comes, but never he"? 
 
 Nay, by our wondrous being, nay! 
 
178 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Although his face I never see, 
 Through all the infinite To Be, 
 I know he lives and cares for me. 
 
 The Invisible. 
 
 And with what calm and confident assurance 
 does he accept the gospel truth that heaven is 
 home a place of comfort for the sorrowing, rest 
 for the weary, peace for the distracted, shelter for 
 the storm-tossed and wandering. All that human 
 thought and love can put, even by deepest and 
 fullest implication, into that word "home" all 
 this and more than this he realizes as the essential 
 characteristic of heaven : 
 
 O heart, that prayest so for God to send 
 
 Some loving messenger to go before 
 
 And lead the way to where thy longings end, 
 
 Be sure, be very sure, that soon will come 
 His kindest angel, and through that still door 
 Into the Infinite love will lead thee home. 
 
 Home. 
 
 But best of all, truest and strongest of all, are the 
 verses so happily named "A Morning Thought." 
 The conception is beautifully accordant with the 
 Christian thought of death as the morning of a 
 new day, and surely no one could ask for finer or 
 more melodious phrasing. The very essence of 
 Christian faith and hope is here: 
 
 What if some morning, when the stars were paling, 
 And the dawn whitened, and the East was clear, 
 
 Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence 
 Of a benignant Spirit standing near: 
 
THINGS OF THE SPIRIT 179 
 
 And I should tell him, as he stood beside me, 
 
 41 This is our Earth most friendly Earth, and fair; 
 Daily its sea and shore through sun and shadow 
 
 Faithful it turns, robed in its azure air: 
 "There is blest living here, loving and serving, 
 
 And quest of truth, and serene friendships dear; 
 But stay not, Spirit! Earth has one destroyer 
 
 His name is Death: flee, lest he find thee here!" 
 And what if then, while the still morning brightened, 
 
 And freshened in the elm the Summer s breath, 
 Should gravely smile on me the gentle angel 
 
 And take my hand and say, "My name is Death." 
 
 It reminds you of what Zschokke says of Death: 
 "I have made myself so familiar with this last, best 
 friend of man that it not only fails to frighten, but 
 it comforts and gladdens me." 
 
 As we close these little volumes the beautiful 
 and striking poem of Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
 written in commemoration of Sill comes to our 
 mind and expresses our feeling, our sadness and 
 joy sadness at his departure, joy at what he has 
 left us of himself. Mr. Aldrich tells us that he was 
 reading a letter just received from Mr. Sill, when 
 the lightning flashed the tidings of his death. 
 Then he adds: 
 
 I wondered what it was that died! 
 
 The man himself was here, 
 His modesty, his scholar s pride, 
 
 His soul serene and clear. 
 These neither death nor time shall dim, 
 
 Still this sad thing must be 
 Henceforth I may not speak to him, 
 
 Though he can speak to me! 
 
180 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Even thus, in these poems touching God, and 
 man, and destiny; dealing with principle and prac 
 tice, thought and life, here and hereafter; filled with 
 faith, and hope, and love; instinct with courage 
 and cheer, he being dead yet speaketh to men of 
 to-day. 
 
AFTERWORD 
 
 THE SUPREMACY OF THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 THE age is often spoken of as nonspiritual and 
 materialistic. The casual observer notes surface 
 currents and straightway declares that the dollar 
 mark is the national ideal. But this is only a 
 superficial view; the deeper life is everywhere pres 
 ent, and in this day is making itself increasingly 
 felt. One of the most important as well as one of 
 the most helpful tendencies of modern life is the 
 growing sense of the supremacy of the spiritual. 
 
 Commerce and civics are responding to the finer 
 ideals of this higher life. The revelations and 
 revolutions in these spheres of activity are evi 
 dences of the vitality of the life of the Spirit. It is 
 not merely by chance that Gladstone, McKinley, 
 Hay, and Roosevelt, the foremost figures in recent 
 Anglo-Saxon political life, are also eminent as 
 illustrations of the molding and moving power of 
 spiritual ideals. There is an intimate and vital 
 connection between statesmanship and spiritual 
 vision. The application by the late Mr. John 
 Hay of the golden rule to the world s diplo 
 macy is the most significant and striking fact in 
 modern statecraft. 
 
 181 
 
182 THE SUPREMACY OF THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 So also is it in the scientific world. The bald, 
 atheistic, nonspiritual theory of evolution so prev 
 alent a few years since is no longer in the ascend 
 ant. Scientific men themselves have been among 
 the first to point out its incompleteness. The 
 " survival of the fittest " may serve as the law of 
 the jungle, but it can never explain humanity. 
 Something more than crude selfishness is required 
 in anything like a complete analysis of mankind, 
 and the spiritual will surely be an element in this 
 complete and final accounting. 
 
 And certainly it is worthy of note that we have 
 an increasing group of writers in prose and poetry 
 who, in this active and miscalled materialistic 
 time, are emphasizing the value of the spiritual. 
 Illustrations may be found in Van Dyke, Mabie, 
 Wagner, and Brierley among the essayists. To 
 read them is to find proof of the renaissance of 
 the spiritual. One feels that Mabie touches fun 
 damental truth when he writes, " No dead mechan 
 ism moves the stars, or lifts the tides, or calls the 
 flowers from their sleep. Truly this is the gar 
 ment of the Deity, and here is the awful splendor 
 of the perpetual Presence." And this is the truth 
 taught by the singers we have been considering. 
 They are not deceived by appearances; they do 
 not mistake the surface for the substance; they do 
 not substitute matter for spirit. With Napoleon 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF THE SPIRITUAL 183 
 
 they hold, " You can only govern men by imagi* 
 nation: without imagination they are brutes. . . . 
 Tis by speaking to the soul you electrify men." 
 And it is to the soul that these singers have spoken, 
 even as it is of the soul its possibilities and 
 achievements that they have sung. Herein lies 
 their value to this age and to every age; for the 
 supreme question still is, " What shall it profit a 
 man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his 
 own soul ?" And the chief business, for the indi 
 vidual and for the universe, in time and through 
 eternity, is just this the development of the soul. 
 
 What is left for us, save, in growth 
 Of soul, to rise up, far past both, 
 From the gift looking to the giver, 
 And from the cistern to the river, 
 And from the finite to infinity, 
 And from man s dust to God s divinity? 
 
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