| |
I NOT yet hast Thou sounded | |
| Thy clangorous music, | |
| Whose strings are under the mountains… | |
| Not yet hast Thou spoken | |
| The blooded, implacable Word… | 5 |
| |
| But I hear in the Iron singing— | |
| In the triumphant roaring of the steam and pistons | |
| pounding— | |
| Thy barbaric exhortation… | |
| And the blood leaps in my arteries, unreproved, | 10 |
| Answering Thy call… | |
| All my spirit is inundated with the tumultous passion | |
| of Thy Voice, | |
| And sings exultant with the Iron, | |
| For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen… | 15 |
| |
| Oh fashioned in fire— | |
| Needing flame for Thy ultimate word— | |
| Behold me, a cupola | |
| Poured to Thy use! | |
| |
| Heed not my tremulous body | 20 |
| That faints in the grip of Thy gauntlet. | |
| Break it … and cast it aside… | |
| But make of my spirit | |
| That dares and endures | |
| Thy crucible… | 25 |
| Pour through my soul | |
| Thy molten, world-whelming song. | |
| |
| …Here at Thy uttermost gate | |
| Like a new Mary, I wait… | |
| |
II Charge the blast furnace, workman… | 30 |
| Open the valves— | |
| Drive the fires high… | |
| (Night is above the gates.) | |
| |
| How golden-hot the ore is | |
| From the cupola spurting, | 35 |
| Tossing the flaming petals | |
| Over the silt and the furnace ash— | |
| Blown leaves, devastating, | |
| Falling about the world… | |
| |
| Out of the furnace mouth— | 40 |
| Out of the giant mouth— | |
| The raging, turgid mouth— | |
| Fall fiery blossoms | |
| Gold with the gold of buttercups | |
| In a field at sunset, | 45 |
| Or huskier gold of dandelions, | |
| Warmed in sun-leavings, | |
| Or changing to the paler hue | |
| At the creamy hearts of primroses. | |
| |
| Charge the converter, workman— | 50 |
| Tired from the long night? | |
| But the earth shall suck up darkness— | |
| The earth that holds so much… | |
| And out of these molten flowers, | |
| Shall shape the heavy fruit… | 55 |
| |
| Then open the valves— | |
| Drive the fires high, | |
| Your blossoms nurturing. | |
| (Day is at the gates | |
| And a young wind….) | 60 |
| Put by your rod, comrade, | |
| And look with me, shading your eyes… | |
| Do you not see— | |
| Through the lucent haze | |
| Out of the converter rising— | 65 |
| In the spirals of fire | |
| Smiting and blinding, | |
| A shadowy shape | |
| White as a flame of sacrifice, | |
| Like a lily swaying? | 70 |
| |
III The ore is leaping in the crucibles, | |
| The ore communicant, | |
| Sending faint thrills along the leads… | |
| Fire is running along the roots of the mountains… | |
| I feel the long recoil of the earth | 75 |
| As under a mighty quickening… | |
| (Dawn is aglow in the light of the Iron…) | |
| All palpitant, I wait… | |
| |
IV Here ye, Dictator—late Lords of the Iron, | |
| Shut in your council rooms, palsied, depowered— | 80 |
| The blooded, implacable Word? | |
| Not whispered in cloture, one to the other, | |
| (Brother in fear of the fear of his brother…) | |
| But chanted and thundered | |
| On the brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron | 85 |
| Babbling in flame… | |
| |
| Sung to the rhythm of prisons dismantled, | |
| Manacles riven and ramparts defaced… | |
| (Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling…) | |
| Ankle chains bursting and gallows unbraced… | 90 |
| Sung to the rhythm of arsenals burning… | |
| Clangor of iron smashing on iron, | |
| Turmoil of metal and dissonant baying | |
| Of mail-sided monsters shattered asunder… | |
| |
| Hulks of black turbines all mangled and roaring, | 95 |
| Battering egress through ramparted walls… | |
| Mouthing of engines, made rabid with power, | |
| Into the holocaust snorting and plunging… | |
| |
| Mighty converters torn from their axes, | |
| Flung to the furnaces, vomiting fire, | 100 |
| Jumbled in white-heated masses disshapen… | |
| Writhing in flame-tortured levers of iron… | |
| |
| Gnashing of steel serpents twisting and dying… | |
| Screeching of steam-glutted cauldrons rending… | |
| Shock of leviathans prone on each other… | 105 |
| Scale flanks touching, ore entering ore… | |
| Steel haunches closing and grappling and swaying | |
| In the waltz of the mating locked mammoths of iron, | |
| Tasting the turbulent fury of living, | |
| Mad with a moment’s exuberant living! | 110 |
| Crash of devastating hammers despoiling… | |
| Hands inexorable, marring | |
| What hands had so cunningly moulded… | |
| |
| Structures of steel welded, subtly tempered, | |
| Marvelous wrought of the wizards of ore, | 115 |
| Torn into octaves discordantly clashing, | |
| Chords never final but onward progressing | |
| In monstrous fusion of sound ever smiting on sound in mad vortices whirling… | |
| |
| Till the ear, tortured, shrieks for cessation | |
| Of the raving inharmonies hatefully mingling… | 120 |
| The fierce obligate the steel pipes are screaming… | |
| The blare of the rude molten music of Iron… | |
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