The North Country by D.H. Lawrence

IN another country, black poplars shake themselves over a pond, / And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and wheel from the works beyond; / The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the grass is a darker green, / And people darkly invested with purple move palpable through the scene.

Soundlessly down across the counties, out of the resonant gloom / That wraps the north in stupor and purple travels the deep, slow boom / Of the man-life north-imprisoned, shut in the hum of the purpled steel / As it spins to sleep on its motion, drugged dense in the sleep of the wheel.

Out of the sleep, from the gloom of motion, soundlessly, somnambule / Moans and booms the soul of a people imprisoned, asleep in the rule / Of the strong machine that runs mesmeric, booming the spell of its word / Upon them and moving them helpless, mechanic, their will to its will deferred.

Yet all the while comes the droning inaudible, out of the violet air, / The moaning of sleep-bound beings in travail that toil and are will-less there / In the spell-bound north, convulsive now with a dream near morning, strong / With violent achings heaving to burst the sleep that is now not long.