And though so many cried to me, I did not turn back;

And though I was very sorrowful having to leave so many friends behind, I did not turn back;

And though the ground was rough and I was overtaken by fierce storms, I did not turn back;

And though I was misunderstood and my oldtime companions distrusted me, I did not turn back;

For when the soul is once started on the soul's journey, it can never turn back.

V

You woman or you man, known or unknown, this light has come to the world through you, as much as through any other:

Do you not feel it flowing, crowding, pushing, into every corner of your being?

Is there any nook of you left vacant after its electric flood has swept into you?

Can you now go on with your old life as if nothing had happened?

н The whole universe has happened;

All of love in all of life has happened;

All your forgotten kinship to the people has happened;
All the terrible thirst for justice has happened;

And all sad things have happened in gladness at last;

Record

And all things out of place have happened in place at last;
And all old enmity has happened in friendship at last;

The golden age is in my heart today.

THE HOUR OF MAN1

EDWIN MARKHAM

I

It is the hour of man: new purposes, broad shouldered, press against the world's slow gate.

Man bursts the chains that his own hands have made: hurls down the blind fierce gods that in blind years he fashioned.

No more is God a stranger: he comes as Common Man, at home with cart and crooked yoke.

Know man and you will know the deep of God.

II

Man comes a pilgrim of the universe. At altar fires anterior to earth his soul was lighted;

And it will burn on after suns have wasted in the void.

His feet have felt the pressure of old worlds,

And are to tread on others yet unnamed-worlds sleeping yet in some new dream of God.

Lo, man has laid his sceptre on the stars,

And sent his spell upon the continent.

The heavens confess their secrets and the stars publish their mystery.

Man calls the lightning from its secret place, that he may shrink the spaces of the world.

His hand has torn the veil of the great law - the law that was before the world.

1 Reprinted by permission of Edwin Markham's publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co., from "Lincoln and Other Poems" and "The Shoes of Happiness."

And now men trace the orbits of the law, and find in it their shelter and their friend.

III

We men of earth have here the stuff of paradise. We have enough.

We need no other stones to build the stairs on to 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 common human way is all the stuff to build a heaven.

Ours the stuff to build eternity in time.

IV

There is a destiny that makes us brothers way alone.

Into the comrade-future climb the hours.

none goes his

It comes! the high inbrothering of men, the new earth seen by John of Patmos,

A testament of brotherhood.

What avail, O builders of the world, unless ye build a safety for the soul?

Love's hero-world at last, the joy-world wreathed with freedom.

The will to serve and bear, the will to love and dare, and take for God unprofitable risk.

To turn from love is the world's one treason.

V

Hearken, my America, imperious is your errand, and sublime.

The thunders of the sea are in your name, the splendours and terrors in your heart.

'Tis yours to build the world-state in your dream.

To strike down Mammon and his brazen breed.
Yours to shape the mighty deed,

To build the brother-future.

America, rise to your high born part!

Over all lands a winged hope is flying.

THE COMING PEACE

WOODROW WILSON

I

In these days to come it will be necessary to lay afresh, and upon a new plan, the foundations of peace among the nations.

To take part in such a service the people of the United States have sought to prepare themselves ever since the days when they set up a new nation, in the high and honourable hope that it might show mankind the way to liberty.

The American people believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of governments,

The rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful, Their equal right to freedom and security and government, And to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world.

II

Only a peace between equals can last; only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.

There must be not only a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

Right must be based upon the common strength; not upon the individual strength of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend.

The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of questions of territory, or of racial and national allegiance.