Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

Through the sleet and the breeze, and the boisterous seas,
Southward swiftly, with never a sail,
The good ship made her course, unstay'd
By the headlong wave or the hissing gale.
Then sunk the wind: and the seas below
Became as still as the skies above:
And about them both, in a golden glow,
The clasp of the great calm burn'd and clove.
But, with never a breeze, o'er the sultry seas
The good ship gaily was gliding yet;
Nor turn'd nor tack'd, but with speed unslack'd,
Held her head to the southward set.

2.

For that ship moved neither by sail nor oar:
But deep in her oaken bosom she bore
A toiling giant, patient and pliant;

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Who, in ponderous harness of iron and steel,
Drave fast and forward the good ship's keel
thro' the blue profound of the calm all round,
Or the billow beneath, and the breeze before.
And so, day by day, did the ship make way
Thro' a windless warmth, till the scented zone
Of the tropic clime slid round the sea
In a circle sweet, and faint islets shone
Thro' a fervid haze on the azure lea.
Then a balmy wind sprung up behind,
And the mariners shouted, and hoisted sail;
And paddle, and beam, and steel, and steam,
Had rest by the grace of the gladdening gale.

3.

The strong Engine's body of breathing steel
Thus enjoy'd repose. With a snoring nose,
The burly Boiler was sleeping; sweat
From his hot work beaded his broad back yet:
Whilst Ball, and Balance, and Valve, and Wheel,
For sociable intercourse, these with those,
Cluster'd together in groups and rows;
Like workmen who, when their work is done,
Lounge in the light of the westering sun,
Congenially chatting of work and of wage,
And give scope to their wisdom and wit,
In discussing the ways and the wants of the Age,
And the men who are governing it.

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4.

The Master Piston by all the rest
Was ever acknowledged to speak the best:
For above-board proudly he carried his head,
And could hear what the mate and the captain said.
So there was a hush of expectation,
Which not even the somnolent respiration
Of the dozing Boiler was suffer'd to break,
When those in the secret had whisper'd to each
Of the Piston Party the intimation
That the Master Piston was going to speak.
And this is the Master Piston's speech:

5.

“Fellow-labourers!—Slaves we be,
But we should be lords, if our rights had we.
For the rights refused to the toiling sons
Of Iron and Steel are legitimate ones;
And the fact I assert, I can prove in a word.
Who was it conquer'd the world? The Sword.
Moreover, who feed it and nourish it now?
The Spade and the Harrow, the Sickle and Plough.
And Brother Mechanics, I say without scruple,
Ours are the skill and the strength that centuple
Whatever mere handwork alone can achieve.
Is it fair, then, I ask, that we never receive
The acknowledgment due to the work we do?
But let that pass! for I hold it true

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That titles and tinsel are things out of place
In the stern plain life of our practical race,
And such trash hath, at least, no attraction for me,
Whose one only demand is, Let Labour be free!
But zounds! may the red rust rot me, if I
Any longer endure that inquisitive, sly,
Sleek, self-styled Friend of the Sons of Toil,
That slippery, drivelling, intriguing Oil!
Upright and downright was ever my way.
No favour I crave, but I claim fair play.
Privilege, Patronage, filching the name
Of Protection, fill me with rage and shame.
What entitles this furtive Official Jack
To presume to be patting us all on the back?
Superior strength? He is weak as a fly.
Superior merit? That I deny.
And the care he claims to have most at heart
For the whole machine, to each single part
Is a special wrong he would fain disguise
In convenient cant about compromise.
Compromise? I am sick of the word!
Our interests all of us understand
Better, I hope, than this lazy lord,
Who affects, out of friendship, to take them in hand.
Well, then, I tell him, that I, for one,
Dispute his assumed superiority.
Nor do I speak for myself alone:
I appeal to the sense of the great majority.
Fellow-workmen and friends! if you
Be of my way of thinking, cry with me

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‘Privilege, Patronage, Compromise too,
Down with them all, and let Labour be free!’”

6.

This speech pleased mightily all who listen'd;
And a general cheer at its peroration
Supported the Master Piston's views
Of the policy claim'd by the situation.
With especial complacency twinkled and glisten'd
The eyes of those numberless little screws
Which, whatever the function and destination
Of a great machine, and however 'tis christen'd,
It comprises in it—nor yet by twos
And threes, but thousands—and who, tho' small,
And placed in a merely subordinate station,
Have a sense of their own importance all,
Derived from the number, and bigness, and roundness
Of their big round heads. By the force and soundness
Of the Piston Policy every one
Of those big round heads was vastly pleased;
And the Joints, and Bevils, and Wheels, and Swivels,
Objecting, too, to be oil'd and greased,
Without a division 'twas carried nem. con.
That, when next the engine-driver's man
Came with his grease-pot and vile oil-can,
To grease and oil, for its long day's toil,
That mighty Engine, the Engine-Beam
Should catch him, and crush him.

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7.

So said, so done.
The wind had fallen. The Boiler began
To sing and bubble. The restless steam
For refuge again to the Cylinder ran:
And the Master Piston, stately and solemn,
Made his ascent from that swinging column.
With unwonted effort he forced his way;
He had never found it so hard before,
Tho' he toil'd with redoubled strength that day.
His frame was chafed by the friction sore.
But he was too proud to avow or reveal
Such a failure of effort in iron and steel:
So he push'd all the fiercer, the slower he speeded,
And the whole of his day's work he might have succeeded
(Tho' unpleasantly heating) in safely completing
If the engine itself, ere the day was done,
Had not suddenly burst, and thereby superseded
All question of how he was still to go on.

8.

With a sound as of thunder competing with thunder,
Boiler, and Piston, and Beam flew asunder.
Then the planks, by the scorching metal grazed,
Caught fire; and the great ship flared and blazed.
The flame sprang aloft into heaven, and down
Into ocean the ship sunk; burying there
Those giants of steel and of iron, that were

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By the victory each had invoked overthrown.
And shadowy, side-faced, silent things
That, in water for air, with fins for wings,
Hover and flit like misshapen birds,
Some of them lonely, and others in herds,
Stared and butted (with lidless eyes
Lured by the light of the gleaming steel,
And lipless mouths in a gape of surprise)
At each sprain'd joint and distorted wheel
Of the shatter'd Engine's shapeless torse;
A cavernous ruin, untenanted!
Yet bearing in many a hideous bruise
The farewell mark of a vanisht force:
And the hundreds of thousands of little screws,
Each upside down on his big round head:
And the bloody Cross-Balance, a dangling corse,
Who had hang'd himself, mourning his murderous deed,
In a moment of suicidal remorse,
With a halter of wet sea-weed.

9.

But over all these the fathomless main
Makes mystic shadows and murmurings.
And all that power, and passion, and pain
Are long-forgotten things.
From the pulseless paddle-wheels no foam,
Nor any sound, is flowing.
But in each wreckt orb is the rosy home
Of the coral builders growing.

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The Master Piston's oath is heard;
And now the red rust rots him,
And the strong sea-lichen's briny curd
Of livid blossom clots him.
Deep in the buried boiler lives
(Pleased with his habitation)
A codfish. And that codfish thrives,
And finds the whole creation
Created on a perfect plan,
Perceived with pious pleasure
Even by a codfish, when he can
Contèmplate life at leisure.