Title:

Man With the Hoe

Poet:
Markham, Edwin

This was a popular poem: can you tell why that

should be? What words tell you when the poem was
written? Are workers today still experiencing these
same conditions? What has helped?
About the Poem:

Work

The Man With the Hoe is purely an American

product, and every American ought to be proud of it,
for we want no such type allowed to be developed in
this country as the low-browed peasant of France.
This poem is a stroke of genius. However, not
everyone thought this. The story goes that it so
offended a modern plutocrat that he offered a reward
of $10,000 to any one who could write an equally
good poem in rebuttal. The Man With the Hoe has
won for Edwin Markham the title of "Poet Laureate
of the Labouring Classes."

Form:

About the Poet:

Lyric

Markham composed this poem after seeing Jean

Millet's famous painting of a brutalized worker in the
depths of feudal labor. He wrote: "Millet has Homeric
directness in his paintings. He tries to make the
common express the sublime. He tries to make the
infinite visible. In the Man With the Hoe, I saw that
Millet had swept his canvas bare of everything that
was merely pretty, and projected this startling figure
before us in all its rugged and savage reality...I saw in
it the symbol of betrayed humanity...My purpose was
to write a poem that should cry the lost rights of the
toiling multitude...deprived of the enlarging
education of the mind, deprived of the ennobling
education of the heart. I hoped to breathe into the
lines the spirit of brotherhood, the spirit of social
humanity...My poem is a poem of hope. It is a cry for
justice and an appeal to the humanity of the masters,
lords, and rulers of the world. The Hoe-man is not
everyman with a hoe: he is the man under the hoofs
of the labor world. He is the slave of drudgery
because he is the victim of industrial oppression."

Year of Publication:
1899
Age Appropriate:
13-14
Subject:

Stanza:
5
Type:
Free verse
Lines:
49
Rhyme:
Unrhymed
Literary Period:
Realism
Things to Discuss:

What the speaker does in the poem is relate the

singular image to an expansive one and back to
a singular one again -- as though to dig for
apparent meaning.

symbol then expands outward to the divine. And

note the divine here is used somewhat cynically
-- who has dominion over beasts -- man. But
who makes a man into a beast -- man? Divine?

"Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans /

Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground /The
emptiness of ages in his face." already the
speaker is going for a very broad rhetoric with
general terms like "centuries" and "emptiness"
appropriated to the man in the portrait who is
now become more of a symbol for the reader to
sympathize with.

The rest of the stanza faces the divine, so if

heavenly will pushes man back down then "hell"
does this:

For the man is, "made him dead to rapture and

despair / A thing that grieves not and that never
hopes / Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?"
Beast of burden. The speaker is adding more
and more meaning to his propped up symbol
against another symbol of those that "made him"
this way.

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.
The key here is the use of repetition: anaphora
of more and dashes to simulate a build up of
want. More things is needed, but with more
there's greed and menace.

Who loosened and let down the 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 face the passion of Eternity?

And then there is the stanza break, but not a

break in the momentum. The break serves as a
focusing device with, "What gulfs between him
and the seraphim! / Slave of the wheel of labor,
what to him / Are Plato and the swing of
Pleiades?" In one way these lines are trying to
find meaning with the man now a beast of
burden. Knowledge means nothing to someone
meant only to work. And this work is central to
progress but with a price, "Time's tragedy is in
that aching stoop; / Through this dread shape
humanity betrayed," with the divine still pushing
man down, "Plundered, profaned and
disinherited, / Cries protest to the Judges of the
World, / A protest that is also prophecy"

Note how the transformation focuses on the

The last line transitions to the next stanza and

The list of rhetorical questions transforms the

symbol into the beast of burden:

places the speaker as a prophet for protesting,

"O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, / Is this
the handiwork you give to God," Now here the
divine is separated into two groups -- God's
work, and man, taking up the name of the
divine's work. And what is presented, "This
monstrous thing distorted and soul quenched?"
And with the rest of the stanza there's a call to
change what is being made with "music and the
dream" But note here the stanzas getting
shorter and shorter -- the focus and direction is
clear.

reported to have seen the original painting,

which had a profound effect on him, in San
Francisco. Markham was at a New Years Eve
celebration when he read the poem to an editor
of the San Francisco Examiner. Shortly
thereafter, the poem was published in that
paper.
Because of its popularity, the poem was

The speaker asks this big rhetorical question, "O

master, lords and rulers in all lands,/ How will
the Future reckon with this Man?" The previous
stanza talked about the present, the ones before
that the past, and here we get to see the
prophecy through questions, "How answer his
brute question in that hour / When whirlwinds of
rebellion shake the world?" Even beasts rebel
like angels when pushed with the aftermath
being, "When this dumb Terror shall reply to God
/ After the silence of the centuries?" Silence,
dumb, a reply that is not a reply.

translated into many languages and reprinted in

magazines, newspapers, and books numerous
times. The poems success allowed Markham to
spend more time writing and lecturing. In regard
to the reform movements concerning labor
struggles of the time, the poem generated much
controversy. The newspapers received many
letters regarding The Man with the Hoe. The
poem was open to different interpretations.
Some readers said that the poem was

Edwin Markham, who has been called the dean

advocating socialism: Some were in support of

of American poets, received national fame, and

the concept; others were against it. Others said

later worldwide fame, when he published The

the poem contained a prophetic message that

Man with the Hoe. It changed his career

could incite unessential reforms. Still others

immediately. The poem consists of forty-nine

considered the poem a medium for expressing

lines divided into five stanzas of social

farmers and workers grievances.

commentary that focus on Americas working

class and their sufferings. It is a striking poem of
protest against exploited labor.

For Markham, Millets peasant symbolized the

exploited classes worldwide. Markham said that
he viewed it as a poem of hope. a cry for

After viewing French artist Jean-Franois Millets

justice. In the fourth stanza, Markham

world-famous painting of a peasant leaning on

addresses the masters, lords, and rulers in all

his hoe, The Man with the Hoe (1862), Markham

lands. He interrogates them with an implied

was inspired to write his poem in 1898. He is

sense of optimism:

Is this the handiwork you give to God,This

Inhumanity to Man, he writes of the many ills

monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

that have befallen humankind: Mans

How will you ever straighten up this

inhumanity to man,/ Makes countless thousands

shape,Touch it again with immortality;Give back

mourn.

the upward looking and the light;Rebuild in it the

music and the dream;Make right the immemorial
infamies,Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

The second stanza of The Man with the Hoe

opens with an allusion to the Genesis creation
story; Markham refers to humanity as the Thing
the Lord God made and gave/ To have dominion
over sea and land. Markham suggests that

Forms and devices

humans have lost their position and are no

longer held in high esteem, as God intended.

Selecting the best way to express his poetic

Human dignity has been taken away. The

ideas about social and spiritual beliefs, Markham

Thing is the antithesis of the man whom David

chose blank verse, for it provided the flexibility

describes in Psalm 8:4-5: What is man, that

he needed. As Markham employed language, he

thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that

made use of several poetic devices, including

thou dost care for him?/ Yet thou hast made him

vivid descriptions, extended metaphors,

little less than God, and dost crown him with

rhetorical questions, literary allusions, and

glory and honor./ Thou hast given him dominion

symbolism.

over the works of thy hands. . . .

In the first stanza, the reader is given a vivid

Markham continues to focus on some of the

description of a laborer who has been crushed

negative effects of the Slaves of the wheel of

by years of toil, struggles, and injustices, to the

labor. He clearly condemns the exploitation of

extent that one can visualize the negative

labor. Such conditions have caused the laborer

effects: Bowed by the weight of centuries, The

to have an aching stoop and to become devoid

emptiness of ages in his face, on his back the

of mind and heart. Markham also challenges

burden of the world. Markham asks, Whose

the Judges of the World. In the last stanza, he

breath blew out the light within this brain? Some

alludes to changes in the future that may come

other poets have also shown interest in the

about as a result of protests and rebellions.

treatment of humankind. Among them is

Consequently, Markham wants to know how the

eighteenth century Robert Burns, who also was

world will react When this dumb Terror shall

a farmer and a poet. In his poem Mans

reply to God,/ After the silence of the centuries?