The Man with a Hoe

"The Man with a Hoe" is an impassioned protest and lament on behalf of those in servitude, which gives voice, through one symbolic labourer, to the description of what
workers become when yoked to the "wheel of labour" and gives voice to the description of intellectual and spiritual endowments workers are robbed of. The poem then asks
"O masters, lords and rulers in all lands" if the broken "shape" of God's "dream" is really what they want to present to God as their own "handiwork." It further asks what
they and the future will do when, after "the silence of the centuries," this "Man" rebels to "shake all shores" and to judge those who have stripped him of his mind, strength
and humanity.

The first stanza gives a description of the one worker who is the symbol for all in servitude--who, in the last stanza, is called "Man" for his Humanity--that says he is
weighted, empty, bowed down, burdened. He is also "dead to rapture and despair," grief and hope alike. The "light within his brain" has been blown out. The questions of
whose hand made him so and whose breath blew out the light are rhetorically asked.

A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,..

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

The second stanza contrasts this description with one of how God created the "shape" of "Man" that he might "trace the stars," Man being what God "dreamed who shaped
the suns." This equates Man, or workers, with the might of suns.

The third stanza describes the gulf that separates the burdened, lightless labourer from the angels, saying the "dread shape" of Man "cries protest to God": Man, the
shape of humanity betrayed, robbed, made unsanctified, and disowned protests to God.

Is this the Thing...

To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns

The fourth and fifth stanzas are apostrophes addressed to "O masters, lords and rulers in all lands." The stanzas ask if these potentates are proud of their "handiwork" and
if they think their handiwork fitting tribute to give back to God. The stanzas further ask how they, now, and how the future, later, will react when this disowned, betrayed
humanity abandons silence and rises up in rebellion, then sits in judgement over the "masters, lords and rulers" who broke and battered and betrayed them, who stole the
light from them.

How will you...

Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

The latter half of the second stanza is a bit problematic for modern readers. In the phrase "there is no shape more terrible than this," the "shape" is the worker; it is the
Man (representing Humanity). He is "terrible" in the sense of something being formidable or powerful (American Heritage Dictionary): the disowned Man after centuries
of silent slavery is formidable, powerful. He is "tongued" with cries of protests against the greedy; he is "filled" with warnings about salvation for the soul; he is "packed"
with the danger of rebellion waged against the universe.

Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns

And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with cries against the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More packed with danger to the universe.
Quillan Aerreck B. Apuang