He drew a circle that shut me out — heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win — and we drew a circle that took him in!

Edwin Markham (1852–1940), an American poet associated with social conscience writing, published this couplet as part of his short poem “Outwitted.” The poem reflects late‑19th/early‑20th‑century concerns with social exclusion—religious, political, and moral—common in an era of reform movements and sharp boundary-drawing around “orthodoxy” and respectability. Markham’s work often urges sympathy for the marginalized (as in his better-known “The Man with the Hoe”), and “Outwitted” distills that impulse into a compact parable: exclusion is answered not by counter-exclusion but by an enlarging ethic of love that absorbs the adversary rather than banishing them.

The “circle” is a metaphor for the boundaries communities draw—who belongs, who is branded “heretic” or “rebel,” and who is treated as contemptible. The speaker is first cast outside the social or moral perimeter, but responds with “love” and “wit,” suggesting both moral imagination and strategic generosity. The reversal—drawing a larger circle that “took him in”—argues that the most decisive victory over intolerance is not retaliation but inclusion. Markham frames love as an active force that expands the definition of community, turning an enemy into a fellow member and exposing the smallness of the original exclusion.