Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:29:55 +0000

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He drew a circle that shut me out –

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

-Edwin Markham

This short poem is one of my favorites. In a few simple words it expresses the irresistible ability of love to bring people together despite their differences. I have read this poem many times in the past. But, until recently, I didn’t know the name of the man who wrote it.

As I also discovered, we can call this man a brother.

The Early Years

Edwin Markham (Rollins College 1924) was born 155 years ago near the Willamette River in Oregon City, Oregon Territory in 1852. Markham spent most of his early years in various places in California. He worked as a ranch hand, cowboy, and farmer until about 1868.

As with most frontier children, he had a limited formal education that was supplemented with reading and discussing books. At age 16, he entered California College in Vacaville, California. Eventually, Markam transferred to San Jose State Normal School, which he graduated from in 1872.

After graduation, he held various teaching positions in San Luis Obispo County, Christian College in Santa Rosa, and Eldorado County. At age 27, he became the Eldorado County superintendent of schools. While living in Placerville, California, Markham became a member of its Masonic Lodge.

The Poet

Markham’s career as a poet was launched on January 15, 1899, when the San Francisco Examiner published his most famous poem, The Man With The Hoe. The poem was an immediate hit with the public and spread through the country and then across the world.

By the end of 1899, his first collection of poetry, The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, appeared and quickly sold out its first printing.

Two years later another collection, Lincoln and Other Poems, was a popular best seller. This collection contained the poem, Lincoln, the Man of the People, that impressed famed writer Jack London so much that he declared, “If its author had made no other bid for fame, this one bid would suffice.”

This poem was so popular that Markham was asked to read it at the 1922 dedication ceremony of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In 1900, Markham and his third wife, Anna, moved to the East Coast where Staten Island, New York, would become their home for the rest of their lives.

The Celebrity

Because of the great popularity and financial success of his poetry, Markham led a busy life on the lecture and poetry reading circuit. His audiences were as likely to be labor and radical political groups as they were to be the “upper crust” of American society.

His emphasis on political themes and social commentary distinguished his poetry from the work of most other poets of his day. His call for social justice and better treatment of the working class had receptive audiences in union halls, college auditoriums, and the drawing rooms of the literary elite.

Markham wrote four more collections of poetry during his lifetime. He wrote The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems in 1915, The Gates of Paradise and Other Poems in 1920, and New Poems: Eighty Poems at Eighty in 1932.

He also wrote Children in Bondage, dealing with the abuses of child labor, and California the Wonderful, a book about the state’s historical past. Both of these best-selling books were written in 1914.

The Fraternity Man

A few years ago I purchased a copy of The Man With The Hoe that was hand signed by Markham. Much to my surprise and delight the inscription read:

To the Grand Chapter of Theta Kappa Nu, with the fraternal greetings of the author: August, 1928

-Edwin Markham, 1928

Later I discovered that Markham was a charter member of the Theta Kappa Nu chapter at Rollins College. Obviously, he was initiated as an associate member of Theta Kappa Nu. After all, Markham was 72-years-old at the time of his initiation.

Once a Theta Nu, he often visited chapter houses while on his extended lecture and poetry tours of the country. His visits were frequently covered in the Theta News magazine.

In 1933, Theta News documented two of his visits. One visit was to The Theta Kappa Nu California Alpha chapter in late 1933, where Markham attended a University Club dinner in Pasadena, California, organized by the chapter. It was noted that “…Markham once again displayed his keen interest in the members of the Fraternity and their activities.”

Earlier in 1933, “America’s uncrowned poet laureate” visited the Theta Kappa Nu New York Beta (Alfred) chapter to read and comment on his poetry to the faculty and students of the college.

According to Theta News “…Brother Markham arrived at the house about five o’clock in the afternoon giving the fellows the opportunity of having an informal and interesting chat with him preceding dinner. The conversation, for the most part, dealt with the history of Theta Kappa Nu, with the various chapters that Brother Markham had visited in his travels, and his many and interesting experiences during his eventful life.”

After dinner, he even found time before his formal lecture to talk to the chapter’s pledges.

What wasn’t mentioned in either of these articles is the fact that Markham enjoyed a beer or two before his lectures. One of reasons that he liked to visit his Theta Kappa Nu brothers is that they made sure that his thirst was always quenched.

The March 1937 Theta News reported that Markham had received an award of $5,000 from the Academy of American Poets. Markham had founded this organization in 1910.

This award was in recognition of his distinguished service to the field of poetry.

The award was approved by a committee composed of prominent people like Eugene O’Neill, Mrs. Calvin (Grace) Coolidge, and Mrs. James (Betsy) Roosevelt.

He was 84 years of age at the time he received this honor.

Conclusion

Markham was a prolific poet and successful lecturer for more than 40 years.

During his lifetime, he maintained a vast correspondence with such well know people as Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Amy Lowell, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Carl Sandberg.

Markham suffered a stroke in 1936. He never fully recovered and eventually died in 1940, at his home in Staten Island, New York.

He left his collection of over 15,000 books, unpublished manuscripts, documents, and personal letters to the Edwin Markham Archives of the Herrmann Library at Wagner College in New York City, New York.

The crest and crowning of all good — Life’s final star, is Brotherhood

-Edwin Markham

As a postscript, The Ballad of the Gallows Bird, written in 1896, was published for the first time by the Antioch Press in 1960.

In the hundred years since the birth of Paramahansa Yogananda, this beloved world teacher has come to be recognized as one of the greatest emissaries to the West of India's ancient wisdom. His life and teachings continue to be a source of light and inspiration to people of all races, cultures and creeds.

Paramahansa Yogananda was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh on January 5, 1893, in Gorakhpur, India, into a devout and well-to-do Bengali family. From his earliest years, it was evident to those around him that the depth of his awareness and experience of the spiritual was far beyond the ordinary. In his youth he sought out many of India's sages and saints, hoping to find an illumined teacher to guide him in his spiritual quest.
It was in 1910, at the age of 17, that he met and became a disciple of the revered Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. In the hermitage of this great master of Yoga he spent the better part of the next ten years, receiving Sri Yukteswar's strict but loving spiritual discipline. After he graduated from Calcutta University in 1915, he took formal vows as a monk of India's venerable monastic Swami Order, at which time he received the name Yogananda (signifying bliss, ananda, through divine union, yoga). His ardent desire to consecrate his life to the love and service of God thus found fulfillment.

Yogananda began his life's work with the founding, in 1917, of a "how-to-live" school for boys, where modern educational methods were combined with yoga training and instruction in spiritual ideals. Visiting the school a few years later, Mahatma Gandhi wrote: "This institution has deeply impressed my mind."
In 1920, Yogananda was invited to serve as India's delegate to an international congress of religious leaders convening in Boston. His address to the congress, on "The Science of Religion," was enthusiastically received. That same year he founded Self-Realization Fellowship to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India's ancient science and philosophy of Yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation.
For the next several years, he lectured and taught on the East coast and in 1924 embarked on a cross-continental speaking tour. The following year, he established in Los Angeles an international headquarters for Self-Realization Fellowship, which became the spiritual and administrative heart of his growing work.

Over the next decade, Yogananda traveled and lectured widely, speaking to capacity audiences in many of the largest auditoriums in the country -- from New York's Carnegie Hall to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Los Angeles Times reported: "The Philharmonic Auditorium presents the extraordinary spectacle of thousands....being turned away an hour before the advertised opening of a lecture with the 3000-seat hall filled to its utmost capacity."
Yogananda emphasized the underlying unity of the world's great religions, and taught universally applicable methods for attaining direct personal experience of God. To serious students of his teachings he introduced the soul-awakening techniques of Kriya Yoga, a sacred spiritual science originating millenniums ago in India, which had been lost in the Dark Ages and revived in modern times by his lineage of enlightened masters.
Among those who became his students were many prominent figures in science, business, and the arts, including horticulturist Luther Burbank, operatic soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, George Eastman (inventor of the Kodak camera), poet Edwin Markham, and symphony conductor Leopold Stokowski. In 1927, he was officially received at the White House by President Calvin Coolidge, who had become interested in the newspaper reports of his activities.

In 1935, Yogananda began an 18-month tour of Europe and India. During his yearlong sojourn in his native land, he spoke in cities throughout the subcontinent and enjoyed meetings with Mahatma Gandhi (who requested initiation in Kriya Yoga), Nobel-prize-winning physicist Sir C. V. Raman, and some of India's renowned spiritual figures, including Sri Ramana Maharshi and Anandamoyi Ma. It was during this year also that his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, bestowed on him India's highest spiritual title, paramahansa. Literally supreme swan (a symbol of spiritual discrimination), the title signifies one who manifests the supreme state of unbroken communion with God.

During the 1930s, Paramahansa Yogananda began to withdraw somewhat from his nationwide public lecturing so as to devote himself to the writings that would carry his message to future generations, and to building an enduring foundation for the spiritual and humanitarian work of Self-Realization Fellowship (known in India as Yogoda Satsanga Society of India).
Under his direction, the personal guidance and instruction that he had given to students of his classes was arranged into a comprehensive series of Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons for home study.
Yogananda's life story, Autobiography of a Yogi, was published in 1946 and expanded by him in subsequent editions. A perennial best seller, the book has been in continuous publication since it first appeared and has been translated into 18 languages. It is widely regarded as a modern spiritual classic.
On March 7, 1952, Paramahansa Yogananda entered mahasamadhi, a God-illumined master's conscious exit from the body at the time of physical death. His passing was marked by an extraordinary phenomenon. A notarized statement signed by the Director of Forest Lawn Memorial-Park testified: "No physical disintegration was visible in his body even twenty days after death....This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one....Yogananda's body was apparently in a phenomenal state of immutability."
On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Paramahansa Yogananda's passing, his far-reaching contributions to the spiritual upliftment of humanity were given formal recognition by the Government of India. A special commemorative stamp was issued in his honor, together with a tribute that read, in part:
"The ideal of love for God and service to humanity found full expression in the life of Paramahansa Yogananda....Though the major part of his life was spent outside India, still he takes his place among our great saints. His work continues to grow and shine ever more brightly, drawing people everywhere on the path of the pilgrimage of the Spirit."