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English 9: Name: - Section: - The Man With The Hoe by Edwin Markham

The poem describes a man with a hoe who is bowed down by the weight of centuries of labor. He has a face filled with emptiness and burden. His features suggest he is devoid of passion and hope, like an ox. The poem questions who made this man so dull and subdued, bending his back and dulling his mind. It wonders if this is what humanity was meant to be based on man having dominion over the earth. The man with the hoe represents the suffering of humanity over time from oppression. The poem calls on masters and rulers to take responsibility for this condition and asks how they will remedy these wrongs.

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Khrizelle Anne Guyano
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246 views2 pages

English 9: Name: - Section: - The Man With The Hoe by Edwin Markham

The poem describes a man with a hoe who is bowed down by the weight of centuries of labor. He has a face filled with emptiness and burden. His features suggest he is devoid of passion and hope, like an ox. The poem questions who made this man so dull and subdued, bending his back and dulling his mind. It wonders if this is what humanity was meant to be based on man having dominion over the earth. The man with the hoe represents the suffering of humanity over time from oppression. The poem calls on masters and rulers to take responsibility for this condition and asks how they will remedy these wrongs.

Uploaded by

Khrizelle Anne Guyano
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Name: ________________________

Section: _______________________ ENGLISH 9

THE MAN WITH THE HOE Handout 5


By Edwin Markham

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans


Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
ILLUSTRATION (Draw a picture of the man with the hoe.)
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 bother 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 that this— CITATION (Give lines that prove the EXPLANATION (Explain what the lines
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed— description.) mean.)
More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
More fraught with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of 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;
1. How does the poet describe him?
Rebuild in it the music and the dream; 2. What does the bent body of the man
Make right the immemorial infamies, with the hoe signify?
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
3. Who is responsible for the condition or
O masters, lord and rulers in all lands, state of the man with the hoe?
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
4. Who are the modern “man with the
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? hoe”? does the society treat the man?
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 centuries?

Vocabulary

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