"They lay us waste by fire and steel,
Besiege us to our very doors;
Our crops before the driving wheel
Fall captive to the conquerors.
"The pastoral age is dead, is dead!
Of all the happy ages chief;
Let every mower bow his head,
In token of sincerest grief.
"And let our brows be thickly bound
With every saddest flower that blows;
And all our scythes be deeply wound
With every mournful herb that grows."
Thus sang the mowers; and they said,
"The world has lost its dewy prime;
Alas! the Golden age is dead,
And we are of the Iron time!"
Each wreathed his scythe and twined his head;
They took their slow way through the plain:
The minstrel and the maiden led
Across the fields the solemn train.
The air was rife with clamorous sounds,
Of clattering factory-thundering forge,--
Conveyed from the remotest bounds
Of smoky plain and mountain gorge.
Here, with a sudden shriek and roar,
The rattling engine thundered by;
A steamer past the neighboring shore
Convulsed the river and the sky.
The brook that erewhile laughed abroad,
And o'er one light wheel loved to play,
Now, like a felon, groaning trod
Its hundred treadmills night and day.
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