Inspirational Quotes by Edwin Markham (American Poet)

Edwin Markham (1852–1940,) born Charles Edward Anson Markham, was an American poet and lecturer best known for his poem “The Man with the Hoe,” on the brutality of harsh work.

Born in Oregon City, Oregon, Markham grew up on an isolated valley ranch in the Suisun hills in central California. He was a member of the first graduating class (1872) at San Jose Normal School, now called San Jose State University. He became first a teacher and then a school administrator.

In 1899, Markham gained national fame with the publication in the San Francisco Examiner of “The Man with the Hoe.” Inspired by French painter Jean-François Millet’s L’homme à la houe, Markham made the French peasant the symbol of the exploited classes worldwide. Its success enabled Markham to devote himself to writing and lecturing—in which he concerned himself with social and industrial problems.

Markham’s first book of verse, The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899,) followed Lincoln and Other Poems (1901.) Markham read its lead poem “Lincoln, the Man of the People” at the dedication (1922) of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Markham’s further volumes—Shoes of Happiness (1915,) Gates of Paradise (1920,) New Poems: Eighty Songs at Eighty (1932,) and The Star of Araby (1937)—lack the passion of the early works. The Markham papers are at Wagner College, Staten Island, New York. Biographies include William L. Stidger’s Edwin Markham (1933.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by 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 upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
—Edwin Markham

Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!
—Edwin Markham
Topics: Dreams

The crest and crowning of all good, life’s final star, is Brotherhood.
—Edwin Markham
Topics: Humanity

We all are blind until we see
That in the human plan
Nothing is worth the making if
It does not make the man.
Why build these cities glorious
If man unbuilded goes?
In vain we build the world, unless
The builder also grows.
—Edwin Markham

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

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

Choices are the hinges of destiny.
—Edwin Markham
Topics: Decisions

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
Topics: Love

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

Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.
—Edwin Markham
Topics: Adversity, Defeat

There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
—Edwin Markham
Topics: Humanity

The thing that is incredible is life itself. Why should we be here in this sun-illuminated universe? Why should there be green earth under our feet?
—Edwin Markham
Topics: Faith

Whoever falls from God’s right hand is caught into his left.
—Edwin Markham
Topics: Faith, Divinity, God

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Dorothy Parker American Humorist, Journalist
Langston Hughes American Poet, Writer
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American Poet
John Jay Chapman American Writer
Robert Frost American Poet
Emily Dickinson American Poet
Gertrude Stein American Writer
Theodore Roethke American Poet
Edgar Allan Poe American Poet
Witter Bynner American Poet

Inspirational Quotes by Edwin Markham (American Poet)

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply