Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CABLES AND THE WIRELESS, by HARRY HIBBARD KEMP


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CABLES AND THE WIRELESS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The cable-operators swore because they / had lost a word
Last Line: And the wireless-workers wondered why a break in the code occurred.
Subject(s): Modern Man


THE cable-operators swore because they had lost a word,
And the wireless-workers wondered why a break in the code-occurred. ...

The plaint of the Deep-sea Cables as they lie in their sunless bed
While liners flit like wind-blown clouds through the watery vast o'erhead;
Couched soft in ever-dripping ooze, and covered with living shells
Alive with innumerable things and inquisitive tentacles,
O'er ridges of tide-washed mountains, thro' fish-haunted valleys they go;
Above them the ponderous waters swing and the crashing tempests blow,
And many a night the Milky Way bends its magnificent bow
Along the vault of the star-vast sky, its glory reflected below;
Its smoke's blue hint on the heaven's edge the lone tramp steamer trails,
And day by day great ships sweep by with flash and glimmer of sails,
While deep in watery empires dim where silence brims to the shores
The lightning-footed messages leap along the ocean-floors ...
The plaint of the Deep-sea Cables beholding their empire done,
Of every office stripped to clothe the Newly-Anointed One:
"For many a year, alone, obscure, we've toiled unceasing for Man
And added as suburbs to London the cities of teeming Japan;
We've dragged our lengths laboriously from Deep to profounder Deep,
And harnessed our souls to the will of Him—and, lo, the reward we reap!
For He has discovered a feminine thing that runs with the great winds free
Over the leagues of the steadfast land and the shifting acres of sea;
She steals the warm live words from our mouths, and now they will let us lie
Abandoned amid the ooze and shells, to drop to pieces and die,
Here with the rotten hulks of ships and the bones of mariners,
No more to throb with the rapid tide of human passions and fears."

Now the sensitive heart of the Wireless by the grief of her forbears was
stirred,
And, bending above them, she sent them the balm of a soothing word:
"Be silent, ye Deep-sea Cables! Your echoing voices arouse
The sleep and the sloth of the ocean and the things which inhabit his house;
Chide not, for I too am the vassal, like you, of the effort of Man
To push further back the horizon toward the verge of the Infinite Plan.
And perhaps in the widening ages and the manifold days which ensue
I too must step down from my conquest, and render my wand to a new
And swifter-footed Invention, which, leaping the chasm to Mars,
Will link all the planets together in a common code of the stars,
And a large and unthought-of communion will tie on its sandals and run
Its errands from planet to planet—from the flaming hills of the sun
To the swing of the outermost orbit 'twill flash on its messages, free,
As I thro' the wide air-ocean, as you thro' the deeps of the sea."

Then the Wireless resumed her travail, and peace reigned again as of yore,
And the Cables gave over their clamor and bickered and fretted no more. ...

But the Cable Operators swore because they had lost a word,
And the Wireless-Workers wondered why a break in the code occurred.





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