A Farm Boy Who Devoured Books Writes One of the Greatest Poems of the
Century.
THE international discussion of “The Man with the Hoe” had hardly
subsided, when popular interest was revived by the remarkable
declaration of the author, Mr. Edwin Markham, that he had spent ten
years in its production.
Who is this magician of the pen, this man of mystery, who carries his
readers, in a single sentence, through “a storm of stars,” and, in
another, kneels with them in dreamy sympathy beside “the brother to
the ox,”—who mixes up the critics in a hopeless tangle of doubt, and
puzzles the public by the erratic chronology of his mental processes?
The widespread interest in the personality of the poet may justify
the attempt of the writer to get at the “true inwardness” of his
life-story. This has not yet been told.
This handsome dreamer, whose eyes are softer than a fawn’s, and
whose gray-tinged locks give an unwonted majesty to his mien, is
only about fifty years old. Yet, in his span of life, he has been
engaged in half a score of vocations, ranging from the exciting and
strenuous to the peaceful and poetic. The discovery that he was once
a village blacksmith promises to lend interest to a new phase of his
distinguished career.