A Manchester Poem by George MacDonald — Read

'Tis a poor drizzly morning, dark and sad. / The cloud has fallen, and filled with fold on fold / The chimneyed city; and the smoke is caught, / And spreads diluted in the cloud, and sinks, / A black precipitate, on miry streets. / And faces gray glide through the darkened fog.

Slave engines utter again their ugly growl, / And soon the iron bands and blocks of stone / That prison them to their task, will strain and quiver / Until the city tremble. The clamour of bells, / Importunate, keeps calling pale-faced forms / To gather and feed those Samsons' groaning strength / With labour; and among the many come / A man and woman -- the woman with her gown / Drawn over her head, the man with bended neck / Submissive to the rain. Amid the jar, / And clash, and shudder of the awful force, / They enter and part -- each to a different task, / But each a soul of knowledge to brute force, / Working a will through the organized whole / Of cranks and belts and levers, pinions and screws / Wherewith small man has eked his body out, / And made himself a mighty, weary giant. / In labour close they pass the murky day, / 'Mid floating dust of swift-revolving wheels, / And filmy spoil of quick contorted threads, / Which weave a sultry chaos all about; / Until, at length, old darkness, swelling slow / Up from the caves of night to make an end, / Chokes in its tide the clanking of the looms, / The monster-engines, and the flying gear.