The Triumph of the Machine |
They talk of the triumph of the machine, | |
but the machine will never triumph. | |
Out of the thousands and thousands of centuries of man | |
the unrolling of ferns, white tongues of the acanthus lapping at the sun, | |
5 | for one sad century |
machines have triumphed, rolled us hither and thither, | |
shaking the lark's nest till the eggs have broken. | |
Shaken the marshes, till the geese have gone | |
and the wild swans flown away singing the swan-song at us. | |
10 | Hard, hard on the earth the machines are rolling, |
but through some hearts they will never roll. | |
The lark nests in his heart | |
and the white swan swims in the marshes of his loins, | |
and through the wide prairies of his breast a young bull herds his cows, | |
15 | lambs frisk among the daisies of his brain. |
And at last | |
all these creatures that cannot die, driven back | |
into the uttermost corners of the soul, | |
will send up the wild cry of despair. | |
20 | The thrilling lark in a wild despair will trill down arrows from the sky, |
the swan will beat the waters in rage, white rage of an enraged swan, | |
even the lambs will stretch forth their necks like serpents, | |
like snakes of hate, against the man in the machine: | |
even the shaking white poplar will dazzle like splinters of glass against him. | |
25 | And against this inward revolt of the native creatures of the soul |
mechanical man, in triumph seated upon the seat of his machine | |
will be powerless, for no engine can reach into the marshes and depths of a man. | |
So mechanical man in triumph seated upon the seat of his machine | |
will be driven mad from within himself, and sightless, and on that day | |
30 | the machines will turn to run into one another |
traffic will tangle up in a long-drawn-out crash of collision | |
and engines will rush at the solid houses, the edifice of our life | |
will rock in the shock of the mad machine, and the house will come down. | |
Then, far beyond the ruin, in the far, in the ultimate, remote places | |
35 | the swan will lift up again his flattened, smitten head |
and look round, and rise, and on the great vaults of his wings | |
will sweep round and up to greet the sun with a silky glitter of a new day | |
and the lark will follow trilling, angerless again, | |
and the lambs will bite off the heads of the daisies for very friskiness. | |
40 | But over the middle of the earth will be the smoky ruin of iron |
the triumph of the machine This poem is so true about what our world faces environmentally today. Mother Nature will eventually take back what is hers. |
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