THE MAN WITH THE HOE*
Written after seeing Millet's painting of the stoopt figure of the Hoe-man.
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, s
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
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the
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
*Copyright by Edwin Markham and used by his permission
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-
quencht?
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 of the lands,
How will the Future reckon with this man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores? 45 How will it be with kingdoms and with kingsWith those who shapt him to the thing he is— When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the
After the silence of the centuries?
LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE
PEOPLE*
WHEN the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down
To make a man to meet the mortal need.
She took the tried clay of the common road- s
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth,
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears;
Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.
Into the shape she breathed a flame to light 10
That tender, tragic, ever-changing face;
And laid on him a sense of the Mystic Powers,
Moving all husht—behind the mortal veil.
Here was a man to hold against the world,
A man to match the mountains and the sea. 15
The color of the ground was in him, the red earth, The smack and tang of elemental things:
The rectitude and patience of the cliff;
*Copyright by Edwin Markham, 1919, and used by his per
The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves;
The friendly welcome of the wayside well;
The courage of the bird that dares the sea;
The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;
The pity of the snow that hides all scars;
The secrecy of streams that make their way
Under the mountain to the rifted rock;
The tolerance and equity of light
That gives as freely to the shrinking flower
As to the great oak flaring to the wind-
To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn
That shoulders out the sky. Sprung from the
He drank the valorous youth of a new world. The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul. His words were oaks in acorns; and his thoughts Were roots that firmly gript the granite truth. 35
Up from log cabin to the Capitol,
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve
To send the keen ax to the root of wrong,
Clearing a free way for the feet of God,
The eyes of conscience testing every stroke,
To make his deed the measure of a man.
He built the rail-pile as he built the State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow:
The grip that swung the axe in Illinois
Was on the pen that set a people free.
So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the judgment thunders split the house,
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest,
He held the ridgepole up, and spikt again
The rafters of the Home. He held his place—so
Held the long purpose like a growing tree-
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.
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, 55
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT
(In Springfield, Illinois)
IT IS portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down, 4
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black, A famous high-top hat and plain worn shawl Make him the quaint great figure that men love, The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:-as in times before!
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