I ain’t afraid uv snakes or toads, or bugs or worms or mice,
An’ things ’at girls are skeered uv I think are awful nice!
I’m pretty brave I guess; an’ yet I hate to go to bed,
For, when I’m tucked up warm an’ snug an’ when my prayers are said,
Mother tells me “Happy Dreams” an’ takes away the light,
An’ leaves me lyin’ all alone an’ seein’ things at night!
Sometimes they’re in the corner, sometimes they’re by the door,
Sometimes they’re all a-standin’ in the middle uv the floor;
Sometimes they are a-sittin’ down, sometimes they’re walkin’ round
So softly and so creepy-like they never make a sound!
Sometimes they are as black as ink, an’ other times they’re white—
But color ain’t no difference when you see things at night!
Once, when I licked a feller ’at had just moved on our street,
An’ father sent me up to bed without a bite to eat,
I woke up in the dark an’ saw things standin’ in a row,
A-lookin’ at me cross-eyed an’ p’intin’ at me—_so!_
Oh, my! I wuz so skeered ’at time I never slep’ a mite—
It’s almost alluz when I’m bad I see things at night!
Lucky thing I ain’t a girl or I’d be skeered to death!
Bein’ I’m a boy, I duck my head an’ hold my breath.
An’ I am, oh _so_ sorry I’m a naughty boy, an’ then
I promise to be better an’ I say my prayers again!
Gran’ma tells me that’s the only way to make it right
When a feller has been wicked an’ sees things at night!
An’ so when other naughty boys would coax me into sin,
I try to skwush the Tempter’s voice ’at urges me within;
An’ when they’s pie for supper, or cakes ’at’s big an’ nice,
I want to—but I do not pass my plate f’r them things twice!
No, ruther let Starvation wipe me slowly out o’ sight
Than I should keep a-livin’ on an’ seein’ things at night!
_Edwin Markham_
Edwin Markham was born in Oregon City, Oregon, April 23, 1852, the
youngest son of pioneer parents. His father died before he had
reached his fifth year and in 1857 he was taken by his mother to a
wild valley in the Suisun Hills in central California. Here he grew
to young manhood; farming, broncho-riding, laboring on a cattle
ranch, educating himself in the primitive country schools and
supplementing his studies with whatever books he could procure. At
eighteen he determined to be a teacher and entered the State Normal
School at San Jose. After some years he became superintendent and
principal of various schools in that locality.
Since childhood, Markham had been writing verses of no extraordinary
merit, one of his earliest pieces being a typically Bryonic echo (_A
Dream of Chaos_) full of the high-sounding fustian of the period.
Several years before he uttered his famous challenge, Markham was
writing poems of protest, insurrectionary in theme but conventional
in effect. Suddenly, in 1899, a new force surged through him; a
sense of outrage at the inequality of human struggle voiced itself
in the sweeping and sonorous poem, “The Man with the Hoe.” (See
Preface.) Inspired by Millet’s painting, Markham made the bowed,
broken French peasant a symbol of the poverty-stricken toiler in all
lands—his was a protest not against labor but the drudgery, the
soul-destroying exploitation of labor. “The Yeoman is the landed and
well-to-do farmer,” says Markham, “you need shed no tears for him.
But here in the Millet picture is his opposite—the Hoeman; the
landless, the soul-blighted workman of the world, the dumb creature
that has no time to rest, no time to think, no time for the hopes
that make us men.” ... “The Man with the Hoe,” with its demand for a
keener sense of social responsibility, was not wholly cast in the
key of challenge. It looked to a more expansive future when “all
workers will think and all thinkers will work”; it answered Music’s
great trio of B.’s (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms) with the need of a
greater three: “Bread, Beauty and Brotherhood.”
The success of the poem upon its appearance in the San Francisco
_Examiner_ (January 15, 1899) was instantaneous and universal. The
lines appeared in every part of the globe; it was quoted and copied
in every walk of life, in the literary world, the leisure world, the
labor world. The same year of its publication, it was incorporated
in Markham’s first volume _The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems_
(1899). Two years later, his almost as well known poem was
published. The same passion that fired Markham to champion the great
common workers equipped him to write fittingly of the Great Commoner
in _Lincoln, and Other Poems_ (1901). His later volumes are
dignified and melodious but scarcely remarkable. Never reaching the
heights of his two early classics, there are, nevertheless, many
moments of a related nobility in _The Shoes of Happiness_ (1914) and
_The Gates of Paradise_ (1920).
Markham came East in 1901, his home being on Staten Island, New
York.