Giant Hours With Poet Preachers | Page 2

Mount. For that sermon may be taken to be the first draft of the constitution of the new social order that the Christ has in his heart for men. It was this new order that he had in mind when he uttered the great invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." All the work-worn toilers of the world were to find rest in the new brotherly order about to be established on the earth. The Master has laid one great duty upon his followers--to embrother men and to emparadise the world.
This is a great labor, for it demands that the spirit of the brother Christ shall sing in all the wheels and sound in all the steps of our industrial life. It means that the Golden Rule shall become the working principle in our social order. This is the salvation that Christ came to bring to the world; this is the glad tidings; this the good news to men!
This is only a glimpse of the great social truth of the Lord that is beginning to break like a new morning upon the world. And what I have said in this letter I have tried a thousand times to say in my poems that have gone out into the world. And this new note I catch in the lines of the poets everywhere in modern poets, especially in the poets discussed in the following pages.
Yours in the Fellowship of the great hopes,
[Signature: Edwin Markham]
West New Brighton, N. Y.

FOREWORD
Vachel Lindsay, one of the modern Christian poets, whose writings are discussed in this book, has expressed the reason for the book itself in these four lines:
"I wish that I had learned by heart Some lyrics read that day; I knew not 'twas a giant hour That soon would pass away."
The author of this book makes no assumption that the "Giant Hours" are in the setting he has given these literary gems, but in the "lyrics" themselves.

AMERICAN POETS
EDWIN MARKHAM
VACHEL LINDSAY
JOAQUIN MILLER
ALAN SEEGER

EDWIN MARKHAM [Footnote: The poetical selections appearing in this chapter are used by permission of the publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co., and are taken from the following works: The Shoes of Happiness and The Man with the Hoe.]
A STUDY OF HAPPINESS IN POVERTY, IN SERVICE, IN LOWLINESS; AND A BIT OF "SCRIPT" FOR THE JOURNEY OF LIFE
Edwin Markham is the David of modern poetry. He is biblical in the simplicity of his style. He, like the poet of old, tended sheep on "The Suisün Hills," and of it he speaks:
"Long, long ago I was a shepherd boy, My young heart touched with wonder and wild joy."
THE SHOES OF HAPPINESS.
None less than William Dean Howells has said of him, "Excepting always my dear Whitcomb Riley, Edwin Markham is the first of the Americans." "The greatest poet of the century" is the estimate of Ella Wheeler Wilcox; and Francis Grierson adds, "Edwin Markham is one of the greatest poets of the age, and the greatest poet of democracy." Dr. David G. Downey makes his estimate of the poet, in his book, Modern Poets and Christian Teaching, a little broader and deeper in the two phrases: "He is not more poet than prophet," and, "He is the poet of humanity--of man in relations." And of them all I feel that the latter estimate is best put, for Edwin Markham is more than "the poet of democracy"; he is the poet of all humanity, down on the earth where humanity lives. And that Dr. Downey was right in calling him "prophet" one needs but to read some lines from "The Man with the Hoe" in the light of the Russian revolution, and proof is made:
"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?
* * * * *
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- When those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, After the silence of the centuries?"
THE MAN WITH THE HOE.
"How will it be with kingdoms and with kings?" the "Man with the Hoe" is answering in Russia this star-lit night and sun-illumined day. Yes, Markham is prophet as well as poet. And to this humble writer's way of reading poetry there were never four lines for pure poetry more beautifully writ, neither across the seas, nor here at home, neither east nor west, than these four from "Virgilia":
"Forget it not till the crowns are crumbled And the swords of the kings are rent with rust; Forget it not till the hills lie humbled, And the springs of the seas run dust." The Shoes of Happiness.
Prophetic? Yes! But ah, the music of it!