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The Man with the Hoe is a poem by the American poet Edwin Markham, inspired by Jean-François Millet's painting ''L'homme à la houe''. The poem was first presented as a public poetry reading at a New Year's Eve party in 1898, and published soon afterwards. It portrays the labor 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"〔Nellen, Annette. (Edwin Markham ) at San José State University. Accessed 17 September 2015〕 and translated into 37 languages,〔(Markham's Reflections on Writing "A Man with a Hoe" ), at Department of English, University of Illinois. Accessed 17 September 2015〕 earning Markham about $250,000 over 33 years.〔 The Man with the Hoe :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 the aching stoop; :Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, :Plundered, profaned, and disinherited, :Cries protest to the Powers that made the world. :A protest that is also a 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 all shores? :How will it be with kingdoms and with kings — :With those who shaped him to the thing he is — :When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world. :After the silence of the centuries? ==References== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Man with the Hoe」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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