| |
(MODERN MACHINERY)
WE were taken from the ore-bed and the mine, | |
| We were melted in the furnace and the pit— | |
| We were cast and wrought and hammered to design, | |
| We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit. | |
| Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask, | 5 |
| And a thousandth of an inch to give us play: | |
| And now if you will set us to our task, | |
| We will serve you four and twenty hours a day! | |
| |
| We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive, | |
| We can print and plough and weave and heat and light, | 10 |
| We can run and jump and swim and fly and dive, | |
| We can see and hear and count and read and write! | |
| |
| Would you call a friend from half across the world? | |
| If you’ll let us have his name and town and state, | |
| You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled | 15 |
| Across the arch of heaven while you wait. | |
| Has he answered? Does he need you at his side? | |
| You can start this very evening if you choose, | |
| And take the Western Ocean in the stride | |
| Of seventy thousand horses and some screws! | 20 |
| |
| The boat-express is waiting your command! | |
| You will find the Mauretania at the quay, | |
| Till her captain turns the lever ’neath his hand, | |
| And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea. | |
| |
| Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head | 25 |
| And lay their new-cut forests at your feet? | |
| Do you want to turn a river in its bed, | |
| Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat? | |
| Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down | |
| From the never-failing cisterns of the snows, | 30 |
| To work the mills and tramways in your town, | |
| And irrigate your orchards as it flows? | |
| |
| It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills! | |
| Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake | |
| As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills, | 35 |
| And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake. | |
| |
| But remember, please, the Law by which we live, | |
| We are not built to comprehend a lie, | |
| We can neither love nor pity nor forgive, | |
| If you make a slip in handling us you die! | 40 |
| We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings— | |
| Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!— | |
| Our touch can alter all created things, | |
| We are everything on earth—except The Gods! | |
| |
| Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes | 45 |
| It will vanish and the stars will shine again, | |
| Because, for all our power and weight and size, | |
| We are nothing more than children of your brain! | |
| |
