The Ploughman

UNDER the long fell's stony eaves

The ploughman, going up and down,

Ridge after ridge man's tide-mark leaves,

And turns the hard grey soil to brown.

Striding, he measures out the earth

In lines of life, to rain and sun;

And every year that comes to birth

Sees him still striding on and on.

The seasons change, and then return;

Yet still, in blind, unsparing ways,

However I may shrink or yearn,

The ploughman measures out my days.

His acre brought forth roots last year;

This year it bears the gleamy grain;

Next spring shall seedling grass appear:

Then roots and corn and grass again.

Five times the young corn's pallid green

I have seen spread and change and thrill;

Five times the reapers I have seen

Go creeping up the far-off hill.

And, as the unknowing ploughman climbs

Slowly and inveterately,

I wonder long how many times

The corn will spring again for me.

Gordon Bottomly

To Iron-Founders and Others

WHEN you destroy a blade of grass

You poison England at her roots:

Remember no man's foot can pass

Where evermore no green life shoots.

You force the birds to wing too high

Where your unnatural vapours creep:

Surely the living rocks shall die

When birds no rightful distance keep.

You have brought down the firmament

And yet no heaven is more near;

You shape huge deeds without event,

And half-made men believe and fear.

Your worship is your furnaces,

Which, like old idols, lost obscenes,

Have molten bowels; your vision is

Machines for making more machines.

O, you are busied in the night,

Preparing destinies of rust;

Iron misused must turn to blight

And dwindle to a tetter'd crust.

The grass, forerunner of life, has gone,

But plants that spring in ruins and shards

Attend until your dream is done:

I have seen hemlock in your yards.

The generations of the worm

Know not your loads piled on their soil;

Their knotted ganglions shall wax firm

Till your strong flagstones heave and toil.

When the old hollow'd earth is crack'd,

And when, to grasp more power and feasts,

Its ores are emptied, wasted, lack'd,

The middens of your burning beasts

Shall be raked over till they yield

Last priceless slags for fashioning high,

Ploughs to wake grass in every field,

Chisels men's hands to magnify.

Gordon Bottomley