Edwin Markham Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

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?

Edwin Markham
There is a destiny that makes us brothers:
None goes his way alone:
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back onto our own.

I care not what his temples or his creeds,
One thing holds firm and fast
That into his fateful heap of days and deeds
The soul of man is cast.

Edwin Markham
The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's final star, is Brotherhood;
For it will bring again to Earth
Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;
Will send new light on every face,
A kingly power upon the race.
And till it come, we men are slaves,
And travel downward to the dust of graves.

Edwin Markham
The sea is woman, the sea is wonder—
Her other name is fate.

Edwin Markham
There is no true liberty for the individual except as he finds it in the liberty of all. There is no true security for the individual except as he finds it in the security for all.

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.

Edwin Markham
No soul can be forever banned, Eternally bereft, Whoever falls from God's right hand Is caught into his left.

Edwin Markham
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

Edwin Markham
By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two. So in the wonderful reciprocities of being, we can never reach the higher levels until all our fellows ascend with us.

Edwin Markham
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,
And the dream of the heart comes true. I am out to the roads and the long, long questing,
On dark tides driven, on great winds blown:
I pass the runs of the world, unresting,
I sail to the unknown.

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.

Edwin Markham
I fear the vermin that shall undermine
Senate and citadel and school and shrine.

Edwin Markham
Oft when the white, still dawn lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart, I have felt it like a glory in my heart.

Edwin Markham
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings —
With those who shaped him to the thing he is —
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world.
After the silence of the centuries?

Edwin Markham
The color of the ground was in him, the red earth, The smack and tang of elemental things.

Edwin Markham
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout against the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

Edwin Markham
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?

Edwin Markham
As we go star-stilled in the mystic garden,
All the prose of this life run there to rhyme,
How eagerly then will the poor heart pardon
All of these hurts of Time! Ah, yes, in that hour of our souls dream-driven,
In that high, white hour, O my wild sea-bride,
The tears and the years will be all forgiven, …
And all be justified.

Edwin Markham
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.

Edwin Markham
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in the 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 a prophecy.

Edwin Markham
He went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

Edwin Markham
I will find you there where our low life heightens,
Where the door of the Wonder again unbars,
Where the old love lures and the old fire whitens,
In the Stars behind the stars.

Edwin Markham
If this is a dream, then perhaps our dreaming
Can touch life's height to a finer fire:
Who knows but the heavens and all their seeming
Were made by the heart's desire? One thing shines clear in the heart's sweet reason,
One lightning over the chasm runs —
That to turn from love is the world's one treason
That darkens all the suns.

Edwin Markham
It will all come back — the wasted splendor,
The heart's lost youth like a breaking flower,
The dauntless dare, and the wistful, tender
Touch of the April hour.

Edwin Markham
Come, clear the way, then, clear the way:
Blind creeds and kings have had their day.
Break the dead branches from the path;
Our hope is in the aftermath —
Our hope is in heroic men,
Star-led to build the world again.
To this Event the ages ran:
Make way for Brotherhood — make way for Man.

Edwin Markham
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
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.

Edwin Markham
So I go to the long adventure, lifting
My face to the far, mysterious goals,
To the last assize, to the final sifting
Of gods and stars and souls.

Edwin Markham