Our ways go wide and I know not whither, But my song will search through the worlds for you, Till the Seven Seas waste and the Seven Stars wither, An… - Edwin Markham

We are caught in the coil of a God's romances — We come from old worlds and we go afar: I have missed you again in the Earth's wild chances — Now to another star! Perhaps we are led and our loves are fated, And our steps are counted one by one; Perhaps we shall meet and our souls be mated, After the burnt-out sun. For over the world a dim hope hovers, The hope at the heart of all our songs — That the banded stars are in league with lovers, And fight against their wrongs.

Down all the stretches 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.

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes. Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?