"THE MAN WITH THE HOE.”

WRITTEN AFTER SEEING MILLET'S WORLD-FAMOUS PAINTING.

"God made man in His own image,

In the image of God made He him."-GENESIS.

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?*

EDWIN MARKHAM.

From "The Man With the Hoe and Other Poems." Copyright, 1899, by Edwin Markham. Published by Doubleday & McClure Co.

"THE MAN WITH THE HOE.”

A REPLY.

"Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way she better understands her own affairs than we."-MONTAIGNE.

NATURE reads not our labels, "great" and "small "; Accepts she one and all

Who, striving, win and hold the vacant place;
All are of royal race.

Him, there, rough-cast, with rigid arm and limb,
The Mother moulded him,

Of his rude realm ruler and demigod,

Lord of the rock and clod.

With Nature is no "better" and no

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worse,"

On this bared head no curse.

Humbled it is and bowed; so is he crowned
Whose kingdom is the ground.

Diverse the burdens on the one stern road

Where bears each back its load;

Varied the toil, but neither high nor low.

With pen or sword or hoe,

He that has put out strength, lo, he is strong;

Of him with spade or song

Nature but questions,-"This one, shall he stay?" She answers" Yea," or " Nay,"

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"Labor is worship!"-the robin is singing;
"Labor is worship!"-the wild-bee is ringing;
Listen! that eloquent whisper upspringing

Speaks to thy soul from out Nature's great heart.
From the dark cloud flows the life-giving shower;
From the rough sod blows the soft-breathing

flower;

From the small insect, the rich coral bower;
Only man, in the plan, shrinks from his part.

Labor is life! "T is the still water faileth;
Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth;

Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth;
Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon.
Labor is glory!-the flying cloud lightens;
Only the waving wing changes and brightens ;
Idle hearts only the dark future frightens:

Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in
tune!

Labor is rest from the sorrows that greet us,
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us,
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us,
Rest from world-sirens that lure us to ill,
Work-and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;
Work-thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow;
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping-willow;
Work with a stout heart and resolute will!

Labor is health! Lo! the husbandman reaping,
How through his veins goes the life-current leaping!
How his strong arm, in its stalwart pride sweeping,
True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides!
Labor is wealth-in the sea the pearl groweth ;