THE BUILDER APRIL 1916

EDWIN MARKHAM - POET OF BROTHERHOOD
BY JOSEPH FORT NEWTON

AMONG the poets of America now living there is none greater, alike
in personal character and wealth of genius, than Edwin Markham, who
is the noblest Masonic singer since Robert Burns. Sweet of heart,
with a mind full of benign light, he sings of the old simplicities
and sanctities which must lie at the basis of individual worth and
social welfare, the while he teaches us to see and to follow "that
thread of all-sustaining Beauty that runs through all and doth all
unite." He is, indeed, the supreme poet, since Whitman, of the
goodly, gracious gospel of Brotherly Love so much needed in the
world now and always. Here follows a brief sketch of the man, with
an appreciation of his genius as a singer and a seer.

There is nothing for surprise that such a man descends from a
sturdy ancestry, both intellectual and moral. On his paternal side
his lineage runs back to Colonel Markham, the first cousin and
secretary of William Penn, and later acting governor of
Pennsylvania. His maternal line, through the Winchells, runs back
into the best stock of New and Old England and Holland. Our poet
was born in Oregon, in 1852, whither his pioneer parents had moved
from Michigan. His father dying when the boy was little more than
four years of age, we find him living with his mother and brother
in one of the remote romantic valleys of California. His mother was
a woman of rather silent nature--his brother was deaf and dumb--and
the lad was left much alone with nature and his own inner life.
Years of quiet brooding, while he followed the cattle or folded the
sheep, developed depth and originality of mind, evoking the
poet-soul within him. Memories of those days when he was a shepherd
boy find echo in his poems, as, for example, in "The Heart's
Return."

Partly, at least, his gift of song was an inheritance, for his
mother, albeit so quiet and reserved, was a lover of poetly and a
writer of verse on her own account. Some of her lines were
frequently to be found in the papers of the time. The first money
that Edwin earned was twenty-five dollars for ploughing a
neighbor's field, which his mother told him was his, and that he
might have whatever he wished to buy with it. He bought books--
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, and the poems of Tennyson, Bryant
and Moore. It is not difficult to imagine the use to which he put
those precious volumes in the leisure that was his in the peaceful
valley of Suisun, where he tended the flocks and herds. His chance
for early technical training was slight-- about three months in the
year, and not always that-- but he studied diligently, making the
best use of whatever books came his way. Also, he worked and
dreamed and laid plans, in such various ways as ambitious boys can
devise, until at eighteen he entered the State Normal School at San
Jose, and later finished his school work at Christian College,
Santa Rosa. Believing in the value of handicraft, he mastered the
secrets of blacksmithing, and wrought at the forge for a time. But
a man of his genius was not allowed to remain at the forge, and he
was soon called to other and higher service.

Markham was made a Mason in Acacia Lodge No. 92, at Coloma,
California, in the early eighties, and he has an abiding interest
in the Order. From the first the Spirit of Masonry moved him
deeply, as was natural for a man to whom Brotherhood is not only
"the crest and crowning of all good," but religion in its deeper
name, and who sees that

"The fine audacities of honest deed,
The homely old integrities of soul," 

must be the foundation alike of personal character and social
beauty. He reckons Masonry among the deep, quiet, beautiful forces
destined to soften the hard winter of the world into a great
summertime of friendship and goodwill. Of one who is so chaste of
soul, so aglow with the joy of life and the wonder of the world,
and so brotherly withal, it may be said that he has found the
Master's Word. His friend Joaquin Miller said of him years ago:

"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
nearly all of the great authors of Saxon lands this last third of
a century."

With Markham poetry is not a byplay, nor a soft sensuous
sentimentality, but a high and heavenly vocation, the fit vehicle
for the expression of the truths that make us men. There is
something of the urge of divine necessity in all his song, and a
sense of consecration. It is the prophetic element that one feels
in his music, as of a man who has heard unutterable things and must
speak. One cannot read "The Whirlwind Road," for instance, without
being reminded of St. Paul and the company of those who live the
dedicated life. For him the home of the poet is on the heights, and
his mission is one of leadership--no "idle singer of an empty day,"
but a pilot  voice foretelling a new day:

"Life is a mission stern as fate,
And song a dread apostolate.
The toils of prophecy are his,
To hail the coming centuries--
To ease the steps and lift the load
Of souls that falter on the road.
He presses on before the race,
And sings out of a silent place,
And the dim path he breaks today
Will sometime be a trodden way."

Resolutely he has held himself true to this high ideal of his art,
refining his gold and bringing to it every test, and few men of our
day have more to tell us. Back of all the poetry of Markham lies a
grand philosophy which sees that the great Soul of the World is
just, and loving too. For him the import of life is deep, deeper
than time and the grave, and an awful but judicial Spirit moves
behind our human scene, weighing the stars, weighing the deeds of
men. He is a hushed worshipper before that high benignant Spirit
that goes untarrying to the reckoning hour, defeating the
injustices of men. As we may read in the poem on Dreyfus:-

"O men that forge the fetter, it is vain;
There is a Still Hand stronger than you chain.
'Tis no avail to bargain, sneer and nod,
And shrug the shoulder for reply to God.

From the mighty hand of God--so still, yet so sure--these is no
escape, here or hereafter or anywhere. How compellingly, yet how
compassionately, he teaches this truth in many a golden song. Since
George Eliot there has arisen no more strenuous apostle of the
human deed than Markham. Insistently, consistently, eloquently, he
teaches the absolute justice that lies at the root of things, and
the righteousness to which men must bow at last. Take, for example,
his lines to "The Suicide." How few the words, how vast the
significance! It is a whole philosophy with one dip of the pen:

"Toil-worn, and trusting Zeno's mad belief,
A soul went wailing from the world of grief;
A wild hope led the way,
Then suddenly--dismay !
So the old load was there--
The duty, the despair!
Nothing had changed; still only one escape
From its old self into the angel shape."

No escape in life or death, save in obedience to the just and
loving will of God. What is the will of God? What, indeed, as our
own hearts tell us, but that we must be pure of heart and brotherly
of spirit, making our daily bread "brother-bread," and living to
serve our fellow souls ? Markham has written of Religion as the Art
of Life, and of poetry as the Soul of Religion---as witness his
exquisite study of "The Poetry of Jesus." But, profoundly religious
as he is, religion means for him personal chastity and human
ministry---brotherliness of spirit and deed. Therefore he bids us
pray in words, but also, and still more, in works, for purity of
soul, for loving fidelity to one another, for freedom and
fellowship among men.

Like all the wise ones of old, our poet holds that we know as much
as we do. Frair Hilary, in "The Hindered Quest," inured in his
cell, sought peace in vain till, hearing a cry of human need, he
went forth to do a kindly deed; then, as the Master told him--

"You turned at last your rusty key
And left the door ajar for Me,"-- 

which states in a thumbnail space enough for a creed and a dozen
commentaries. So also in "The Angelus," that collect for any day in
the week, and for every month in the year; and also in "The
Father's Business," to name two of many poems. To the old, brutal
question of Cain, Am I my brother's keeper? Markham makes reply
that we are born for the practice of the Golden Rule, and our
destiny is to learn to live and let live, to think and let think,
building a social order that is wise and just and pure.

"There is a destiny that makes us Brothers;
None goes his way alone;
All we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own."

Indeed, our poet holds that the need of man may be summed up in
Bread, Beauty, and Brotherhood-- Bread, the symbol of physical
necessities which must be met ere man can rise to the higher human
life; Beauty, that manna from heaven to feed the hungry soul on its
pilgrimage; and Brotherhood, the one prophetic word which describes
the translation of the ideal into the real. When we learn to be
brotherly, men will not be used to make money, but money will be
used to make men. Aye, when we have mastered the fine art of
freedom, justice and kindly living, the weary tragedy of human
history will become a chant of victory. And until we learn the
brotherly life "we men are slaves and travel downward to the dust
of graves." Here is our material; here our tools and our divine
design:

"We men of earth have here the stuff
Of Paradise--we have enough! 
We need no other thing to build 
The stairs into the Unfulfilled-- 
No other ivory for the doors-- 
No other marble for the floors-- 
No other cedar for the beam 
And dome of man's immortal dream 
Here on the paths of every day-- 
Here on the common human way-- 
Is all the busy gods would take 
To build a heaven, to mould and make 
New Edens. Ours the stuff sublime 
To build Eternity in time."

America, in the vision of Markham, is the last great hope of man,
because it offers an opportunity for the practice of Brotherhood.
That is its imperious errand among the nations, and "The Need of
the Hour," and all hours, is for fearless, faithful leadership of
honest and true men "star-led to build the world again"-- such
leadership as we had when Lincoln lived. Surely Markham has written
the noblest of all poems in praise of Lincoln. There is not another
like it anywhere. If he had written nothing else, he would be
entitled to our lasting and grateful remembrance. In a wild and
fateful hour, when the nation was in dire plight, the Norn-Mother
bent the heavens and came down to make a man to match the mortal
need:

"She took the tried clay from the common road-- 
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth--
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; 
Then mixed 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."

Truly he is a "good gray poet"--blessings on his head !--so
gracious to know, so glorious to hear, simple, unaffected, kindly,
athrob with faith and hope and love. His last book, "The Shoes of
Happiness," is in some ways his best. His message is the same as of
yore, but it becomes richer, deeper and more varied in its
exposition--sun-bright sonnets, deep-hearted lyrics coming to the
aid of stories, parables and quatrains--and Longfellow might envy
the exquisite grace of "The Jugglers of Touraine." The group of
songs under "The Hero of the Cross," notable alike in insight and
art, are reverent, austere, beautiful, and worthy of high rank in
the Christian Melody. He is of those who know the way to Emmaus,
and the White Comrade who journeys with us when we walk that sunset
path. The first lines of this last book are familiar to our
readers, but they are too characteristic of the inclusive
fellowship of the man and the wise strategy of his love to omit:

"He drew a circle that shut me out-- 
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout, 
But love and I had the wit to win: 
We drew a circle that took him in."

Apollo has been kind to our poet-friend and Brother, granting him
in its fullness the prayer of Horace: a sane and healthy old age
consoled by sweet song. His idealism has not waned with the years.
Time has taught him a deeper faith that forereaches the greater
tomorrow that he so surely sees is on the way. It may not come in
perfectness in his day, or in ours, but come it will, as morning
follows night:

"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 !"

