Edwin Markham Quotes

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.