We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life. - Edwin Markham

It was ages ago in life's first wonder I found you, Virgilia, wild sea-heart; And 'twas ages ago that we went asunder, Ages and worlds apart. Your luminous face and your hair's dark glory, I knew them of old by an ocean-stream, In a far, first world now turned to story, Now faded back to dream.

There are more lives yet, there are more worlds waiting, For the way climbs up to the eldest sun, Where the white ones go to their mystic mating, And the Holy Will is done.

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?