None less than William Dean Howells has said of him, "Excepting always
my dear Whitcomb Riley, Edwin Markham is the first of the Americans."
"The greatest poet of the century" is the estimate of Ella Wheeler
Wilcox; and Francis Grierson adds, "Edwin Markham is one of the
greatest poets of the age, and the greatest poet of democracy." Dr.
David G. Downey makes his estimate of the poet, in his book, Modern
Poets and Christian Teaching, a little broader and deeper in the two
phrases: "He is not more poet than prophet," and, "He is the poet of
humanity--of man in relations." And of them all I feel that the latter
estimate is best put, for Edwin Markham is more than "the poet of
democracy"; he is the poet of all humanity, down on the earth where
humanity lives. And that Dr. Downey was right in calling him "prophet"
one needs but to read some lines from "The Man with the Hoe" in the
light of the Russian revolution, and proof is made:
"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?
* * * * *
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
When those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?"