Man
Out of the deep and endless universeThere came a greater Mystery, a Shape,A Something sad, inscrutable, august--One to confront the worlds and question them.
Words in this poem
- confront v. t.
- To stand facing or in front of; to face; esp. to face hostilely; to oppose with firmness.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Man is in the public domain. This text is taken from The man with the hoe, and other poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #67012; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edwin Markham, Man, in The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #67012, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/markham-man-with-hoe/man.html, id L24763.
Form and metre
Man is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Out of the deep and endless universe | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| There came a greater Mystery, a Shape, | 10 | ···/˘/˘˘·· |
| A Something sad, inscrutable, august-- | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘˘/˘ |
| One to confront the worlds and question them. | 10 | ··˘/···/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.