Arts and Letters

Edwin Markham was born on April 23, Shakespeare's Birthday, 1852; he died on March 7, 1940, having very nearly attained the age of 88. He was born at Oregon City, Oregon, near the shore of the Pacific Ocean, and died on the shore of the Atlantic, thus illustrating Wordsworth's famous conception of human life—that our life on earth is between two mighty oceans of eternity.

Great poets are more important than great statesmen, great scientists, great military men; for while man cannot live without bread, man cannot live by bread alone. The highest values are spiritual. It is better to have the assurance of immortality, of a great destiny, of the significance of the individual personality, than it is to have any knowledge or any gain outside of these. After the depression of 1929, Christopher Morley called on President Hoover in the White House, and asked him what he thought was America's greatest need. The President replied, "America's greatest need is a great poet." Carlyle said that no nation was great until it had a voice; and we know that Italy is not great today because every little boy is sleeping on his knapsack, but because Italy has Dante and the great painters. Germany is not great because she has conquered some other nations, but because she has Goethe and the great musical composers. Russia is not great because she is theoretically communistic, but because she has Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoevski. England is not great primarily because she has the most powerful navy in the world (though I thank God she has) but because she has Shakespeare and a larger number of great poets than any other nation, past or present.

Edwin Markham in his childhood unconsciously gave a good imitation of David. After the death of his father, his mother took the younger children from Oregon to California, and settled on a cattle range near the Coast Mountains. Here Edwin became a shepherd, and spent long happy days following the flocks and herds in the sunlight, and often slept under the stars.

The public school was open only three months in the year, but there happened to be a teacher who loved poetry, and it was this man who awakened in Edwin a passion for poetry which dominated his life. Later the young man became a school teacher himself, then Superintendent of schools in a little town in the Sierras. Here he happened to open a magazine that contained among the illustrations Millet's famous picture of the Man with the Hoe, the second inspiration of his life.

Edwin Markham was not a man of one poem; but it is certain, no matter what he himself thought of the whole range of his work, that this poem, "The Man with the Hoe," must always remain his masterpiece, because it had more influence than all the rest of his productions put together. As Browning said, we judge of the power of men by the length of the shadow they cast; and this poem threw a shadow across the whole world. It was not written impromptu, nor indeed even in a short time. He began it, worked on it at various places and at various times, and finished it near San Francisco in the Christmas vacation of 1899.

Had he spoken it over the radio, it could not have received more instant acclaim. The response of the world was immediate and tremendous. As a result he spent the rest of his happy life not only in writing, but in visiting every State in the Union, speaking to huge audiences and reading his works. On the occasion of the poet's eightieth birthday, widely celebrated, William Rose Benét made an accurate estimate of Edwin Markham's position in literature:

"Markham has retained unusual vigor, both in his personality and his writing. He has always been a dogmatic poet, but with a great liberality of spirit and an accomplished knowledge of versification. He has never surpassed his 'Hoe' and his 'Lincoln' poems. They were the work he was primarily born to do."

His funeral, in Brooklyn, on Sunday, March 10th, was a national event; and he was buried in Los Angeles, beside the grave of his wife.