The color of the ground was in him, the red earth,
The smack and tang of elemental things.

These lines evoke a person so shaped by place and labor that the landscape seems to live inside him. “The color of the ground… the red earth” suggests a literal staining (dust, clay) and a figurative inheritance—identity formed by soil, work, and locality. “The smack and tang of elemental things” intensifies the sensory register, implying a raw, unrefined vitality: the taste of wind, dirt, sweat, and the basic materials of life. Markham’s phrasing aligns with a strain of American poetic realism that dignifies common labor and rural rootedness, presenting “elemental” contact with nature as a source of authenticity and moral force.