The Man Under the Stone
(From “The Man with the Hoe and other Poems”)
By Edwin Markham
(See page [27])
When I see a workingman with mouths to feed,
Up, day after day, in the dark before the dawn,
And coming home, night after night, thro’ the dusk,
Swinging forward like some fierce silent animal,
I see a man doomed to roll a huge stone up an endless steep.
He strains it onward inch by stubborn inch,
Crouched always in the shadow of the rock....
See where he crouches, twisted, cramped, misshapen!
He lifts for their life;
The veins knot and darken—
Blood surges into his face....
Now he loses—now he wins—
Now he loses—loses—(God of my soul!)
He digs his feet into the earth—
There’s a movement of terrified effort....
It stirs—it moves!
Will the huge stone break his hold
And crush him as it plunges to the Gulf?
The silent struggle goes on and on,
Like two contending in a dream.
By Boethius
(Roman philosopher, 470-524)
Though the goddess of riches should bestow as much as the sand rolled by the wind-tossed sea, or as many as the stars that shine, the human race will not cease to wail.
COLD
ROGER BLOCHE (French sculptor; from the Luxembourg Museum)
THE PEOPLE MOURN
JULES PIERRE VAN BIESBROECK
(Sculptor of the Belgian Socialist and co-operative movements; born 1873)