Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE DESERTED FACTORY, by JOHN GOULD FLETCHER Poet's Biography First Line: It stands apart, forlorn, grotesque, immense Last Line: Amid the dust once stirred by workmen's feet. Subject(s): Factories; London | ||||||||
IT stands apart, forlorn, grotesque, immense; Bearing no trace of that magnificence Of fury, toil, and flame which it once wore Day after day, a few brief years before: Windows show shattered glass, holes gape in wall; Askew, a smoke-grimed chimney threatens fall. Around it stretch the marshy flats, the red River amid them crumpled like the dead Arm of a drowned man stretched from shallow grave Amid brown shingle wetted by the wave. Now, to this shell the city's life is naught But desolate distant murmurs, vaguely brought From the horizon-edge where steadily loom Above their flame-shot drifting smoke and gloom, Like battle-towers of a besieging host, The chimneys, from whose heads the smoke is tossed All through the day, in columns mounting high. Throughout the night, flame signals flare in sky, But waken not this ruin huge and cold Which lacks the beauty of all things grown old: This sombre empty shell that laughs at man, Its purpose long forgot and void its plan: This prison of splendid squalor by the waves Left squatting -- dead the master, fled the slaves, From out its dark brown windowless deep walls Where, smoky red, the sun of evening falls Over cold chimneys that desire to sleep But yet to heaven totter, sway, or leap. Along the sterile earth, like lines of pain, Stand etched the shadows of each rusty crane. These once swung precious bales high in the air; But now, like twisted cripples, in despair, Gaze on the ground, half-strewn with vague debris: On torn-up rails, rubbish and starveling tree, Near by which stands a shack, crazy and frail. Within, cadaverous, shaggy-bearded, pale, Like a lost dog there sits a lonely man. 'Tis but an outcast, 'neath the dreadful ban Of hunger, thirst, and all futility; An evil hermit of dreams he looks to be: A black monk waiting for this corpse to fall, That he may spring, and, like a lean jackal, Tear from its bones whatever fragments fate Forgot to take when it grew desolate. Within his eyes averted, stupid, blind, Something seems ever moving like that wind Which humming murmurs here, restless and sweet, Amid the dust once stirred by workmen's feet. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE WHARF ON THAMES-SIDE: WINTER DAWN by LAURENCE BINYON THE IDLER'S CALENDAR: MAY. THE LONDON SEASON by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT A LONDON THOROUGHFARE, 2 A.M. by AMY LOWELL SPRING WIND IN LONDON by KATHERINE MANSFIELD A BALLAD OF WHITECHAPEL by ISAAC ROSENBERG LONDON, FR. SONGS OF EXPERIENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE ARIZONA POEMS: 2. MEXICAN QUARTER by JOHN GOULD FLETCHER |
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