The Man With The Hoe (Written After Seeing Millet's World-Famous Painting) Poem by Edwin Markham

The Man With The Hoe (Written After Seeing Millet's World-Famous Painting)

Rating: 4.4


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?
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?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch 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.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up 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,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

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 the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings --
With those who shaped him to the thing he is --
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
James. Cabalican 13 July 2019

Do you have a song of this peom the man with the hoe pharagraph or stanza number 4

0 1 Reply
James. Cabalican 13 July 2019

Do you have a song of this peom the man with the hoe pharagraph or stanza number 4

0 1 Reply

There are so many beautiful things to look forward to and yes life is counter-balanced with burdens of all kinds..very well written poem..

1 4 Reply
Liliana ~el 28 September 2013

Chilling. Shaking reflection on humanity and nature

1 3 Reply
Havilah Howard 29 November 2004

Markham's poetry frequently references Classical themes, but remains relevant today. This is my favorite of his poems that I have read.

6 2 Reply
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Edwin Markham

Edwin Markham

Oregon City, Oregon
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