Historical Criticism

MAN WITH A HOE 

BY Edwin Markham

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?

ANALYSIS

            

            Historical criticism is the art of distinguishing the true from the false concerning facts of the past. It has for its object both the documents which have been handed down to us and the facts themselves. We may distinguish three kinds of historical sources: written documents, unwritten evidence; and tradition. In the case of the poem, the evidence is written document.This poem  falls under Historical Criticism because it is based on the context in which a work was written, it also includes facts about the author’s life and the social and historical circumstances of the time. The poem shoes what kind of society the author has during the time he is writing the poem. As we can see, a farmer is the central character of the poem which reflects the kind of social stratification early societies has.Thus, the poem of Markham falls under the historical criticism because the status of the main character of the poem is being emphasized to show what kind of social leveling early societies has. It complies with the requirement of historical criticism where the background of the author is very reflective on his writing. The Man with the Hoe is a famous poem written by Edwin Markham inspired by the paintingL’homme à la houe by Jean-François Millet; it was first presented as a public poetry reading at a New Year’s Eve party in 1898, and published soon afterwards. It evokes the laboring of much of humanity using the symbolism of a laborer leaning upon his hoe, burdened by his work, but receiving little rest or reward. It has been called “the battle-cry of the next thousand years” and translated into more than 30 languages.