 | The Battle-Day and Other Poems |  |
What is it, next the church-tower climbs the sky,
How more frequented far, and scarce less high?
What plague-cloud rolls across the darkened land,
And hurls the sun away with shadowy hand?
What wheels revolve in dungeons hot and black,
Of modern tyranny the modern rack?
What horrid birth from that unnatural womb?
The demon god of factory and loom!
Fierce, with a yell he bounds upon the land,
Writhes his thin lip and waves his yellow hand,
And points, where man's volcanoes through the skies,
His thousand temples' burning altars rise.
Curses and groans his ear like anthems greet,
And blighted lives are cast beneath his feet.
His sable banners o'er heaven's glory roll
The shades that blast the heart and reach the soul.
Care-stricken forms the street's long darkness fill,
Embodied dreams of misery and ill!
A more than Cain-like mark their foreheads bear,
For sin's their only respite from despair!
And in each sunken eye's unhallowed cell
The fever flashes, not of life, but hell.
Oaths upon infant lips, and, loathsome sight!
The eyes of childhood without childhood's light.
The laugh of youth a gibbering of art;
Larves of humanity without a heart!
How more frequented far, and scarce less high?
What plague-cloud rolls across the darkened land,
And hurls the sun away with shadowy hand?
What wheels revolve in dungeons hot and black,
Of modern tyranny the modern rack?
What horrid birth from that unnatural womb?
The demon god of factory and loom!
Fierce, with a yell he bounds upon the land,
Writhes his thin lip and waves his yellow hand,
And points, where man's volcanoes through the skies,
His thousand temples' burning altars rise.
93
And blighted lives are cast beneath his feet.
His sable banners o'er heaven's glory roll
The shades that blast the heart and reach the soul.
Care-stricken forms the street's long darkness fill,
Embodied dreams of misery and ill!
A more than Cain-like mark their foreheads bear,
For sin's their only respite from despair!
And in each sunken eye's unhallowed cell
The fever flashes, not of life, but hell.
Oaths upon infant lips, and, loathsome sight!
The eyes of childhood without childhood's light.
The laugh of youth a gibbering of art;
Larves of humanity without a heart!
The very sun shines pale on a dark earth,
Where quivering engines groan their horrid mirth,
And black smoke-offerings, crimes and curses, swell
From furnace-altars of incarnate hell!
The demon laughs, and still his arm he waves,
That thins the villages, but fills the graves.
Through bleak, deserted fields he loves to roam,
Where shines the furnace on hell's harvest-home.
'Tis this has stilled the laughter of the child,
And made man's mirth less holy, but more wild!
Bade Heav'n's pure light from woman's eye depart,
And trodden love from out her gentle heart.
'Tis this, that wards the sunshine from the sod,
And intercepts the very smile of God!
Where quivering engines groan their horrid mirth,
And black smoke-offerings, crimes and curses, swell
From furnace-altars of incarnate hell!
94
That thins the villages, but fills the graves.
Through bleak, deserted fields he loves to roam,
Where shines the furnace on hell's harvest-home.
'Tis this has stilled the laughter of the child,
And made man's mirth less holy, but more wild!
Bade Heav'n's pure light from woman's eye depart,
And trodden love from out her gentle heart.
'Tis this, that wards the sunshine from the sod,
And intercepts the very smile of God!
| The Battle-Day and Other Poems | |