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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 marked their ways upon the ancient deep? Down all the caverns of Hell to their 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 packt with danger to the universe. What gulfs between him and the seraphim! Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? What the long reaches of the peaks of song. The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the Powers that made the world, A protest that is also prophecy. -Edwin Markham (1852-1940), The Man with the Hoe (1899) |