The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-06-25
"THE MAN WITH THE HOE"
From a Volume of Poems Published by
Doubleday & Mcclure Co
Written after seeing Nillets world
famous painting)

| CWritten after seeing Millet's world
famous painting)
Bowed by the weight of centuries he
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 des-
A thing that grieves not and that never
hopes,
| Who looscned and let down this brutal
Whose was the hand that slanted back
Whose ,' Breath blew out the light within
Is this the the Thing the Lord God made and
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens
To feel the passion of eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who
And pi iI1SS II the blue armament with
Down ali the stretch of Hell to its last
There 7 is no shape more terrible than
More tongued with censure of the worlds
More filed with signs and portents for
More fraught with menace to the uni
verse.
What CULTS between him and the sera-
Slave Of the wheel of labor what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks OF
The rift Of dawn, the reddening of the
Through this dread shape the suffering
Times Tragedy is in that aching stoop:
Through this dread shape humanity be-
Plundered. profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the judges of the world,
protest that is also prophecy.
o masters. lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give TO Cod
This monstrous thing distorted and soul
quenched?
How will you ever straighten out this
shape?
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the
light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfdious wrongs. immedicable woes?
o masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this
How answer his brute question in that
hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the
world?
How will it be with Kingdoms and with
With those who shaped him to the thing
he is
When this dumb Terror shall reply to
After the silence of the centuries?
The following review of THE Man with
the Hoe" was written for The Spy by
Rev. DR.. AlmOn Gunnison:
The advent of new poet inrthe world
Of letters is not less an event than the
discovery of a new constellation in the
world of science, and apparently a new
"Lochnvar has come out of the west,
III the person of Edwin Markham. With
the passing away of Longfellow, Bryant
and Lowell in America, and Tennyson in
England, poetry seems to have become
lost art. the only heir apparent to the
vacated throne being Kipling, whose Re
cessional Hymn seems to give hope that
the race of kings is not utterly extinct,
Edwin Markham, however, has awak-
ened the hope that perhaps. there is
new claimant. His fugitive poems have
| been collected into small volume called
| THE Man with the Hoe, and Other
Poems" which creates, not the certain
ty, but at least the hope, that an elect
seer has come With the prophets voice
The poem is founded upon Mmets IA
nous picture and is marked by the Tyth-
mic grace which Is one o.. the Qualities
as it is one of the essentials Of true
poetry. Whether behind the poets art
there is the poets inspiration, is not
quite clear, but there is at least the art
of expression a gift notably wanting in
such verse makers as Whitman and
others. who whatever their success in
winning the admiration of the cultured
few. have never sung themselves iStO the
worlds plain heart. The poem is stately
in its thought, and moves on high level
from which it does not drop; it is illus
trative and puts in words what the artist
puts in color; there is sinewy thought and
phrasing with a pomp of color and move
ment that stirs the mind like the sweep
of the tempest. There is genuine poetry
| in the words
What CUFFS between him and the sera-
Slave Of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches OF the peaks OF
The rift Of dawn, the reddening of the
rose?"
The test of leadership is that it COM
pels men to follow and the singer has the
| poets gift if there is the ,compulsion of
authority in the music Of his song.
1t is impossible to read the first line of
this notable poem, and not be swept on
by it to its close. The awful figure of the
stOlid peasant gathering around itself
the woes of ages fascinates and awes
We feel the burden of his grief. we are
| stirred into indignation at the hopeless
ness that has become inarticulate
|
| voice eliminates into one great trumpet
| call for vengeance, We cry as the Athen-
| ians did when Demosthene ceased his
speech. "let us go and fight Philip"
If it is true that labor is a curse, that
he who tills the soil becomes imbruited by
it, that because man looks into the fur
! row he loses vision to see the stars, that
| in raising a clod to the higher valuations
| of vegetable growth a man must himself
| become a clod that a man must become
"a brother IN the OK
| because he yOkes the oxen to his plow
! then are we heirs of despairing world
and the only hope of humanity is its ex-
! tinction, because life cannot 90 on ex-
cept by plOWings and sOWiugs, the servi-
/ tude. If men choose to call it that, of
/ While it is impossible not to recognize
| the marked excellence of this poem in the
| vigor of its conception, its splendor of
/ illustration its energy and greWsome
| beauty of phrasing, as pOrtraiture ii is
| defective. and as a generalization it is
/ misleading.
The French peasant does not bear. on
| ''his back the burden of the world
| he is not dead to rapture and despair 3"
nor is he "A thing that grieves not and
never hopes" He loves and gives himself
/ Joy, at least with hope At best the poet
/ has given only a description of a descrip-
| ton, not the delineation of type, but of
/ a picture of a type-a copy Of a copy.
| Nor is the poets copy right.
| Granted that we have not the poets
divination Millet's picture is not the pic
! ture of a brute, nor is it true
Their is no shape more terrible than
I this"
/ There is something of aspiration in that
| forward look, and coarse features do not
mark stOlidity in the Breton peasant,
more than they indicated brutishness in
Socrates. The companion picture of Mil
| let of the Angelus, is the peasant of the
| same field but there is the aspiring of the