<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">The Man with the Hoe<br><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,<br>The emptiness of ages in his face,<br>And on his back the burden of the world.<br>Who made him dead to rapture and despair,<br>A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,<br>Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?<br>Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?<br>Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?<br>Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?<br>Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave<br>To have dominion over sea and land;<br>To trace the stars and search the heavens for power.<br>To feel the passion of Eternity?<br>Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns<br>And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?<br>Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf<br>There is no shape more terrible than this--<br>More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed--<br>More filled with signs and portents for the soul--<br>More fraught with menace to the universe.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">What gulfs between him and the seraphim!<br>Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him<br>Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?<br>What the long reaches of the peaks of song,<br>The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?<br>Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;<br>Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;<br>Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,<br>Plundered, profaned and disinherited,<br>Cries protest to the Judges of the World,<br>A protest that is also prophecy.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,<br>Is this the handiwork you give to God,<br>This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?<br>How will you ever straighten up this shape;<br>Touch it again with immortality;<br>Give back the upward looking and the light;<br>Rebuild in it the music and the dream;<br>Make right the immemorial infamies,<br>Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,<br>How will the Future reckon with this Man?<br>How answer his brute question in that hour<br>When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?<br>How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--<br>With those who shaped him to the thing he is--<br>When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,<br>After the silence of the centuries?</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>- Edwin Markham</div></body></html>