IN another country, black poplars
shake them —
selves 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, sound —
lessly, 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.