Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DYNAMO'S SONG by LOUIS JONES MAGEE

First Line: HEAR ME, AND I'LL SING TO YOU
Last Line: QUIETLY I CROON AND HUM.
Subject(s): SINGING & SINGERS;
HEAR me, and I'll sing to you
Music never listened to;
For you must be helped to hear.
Customs prejudice the ear,
And the great world doesn't know
That a painted dynamo
Has a voice that surely means
Just as much as those machines
Poets tell of in the books, --
Mill-wheels turned by mountain brooks,
Saw-mills where the torrent roars,
Spinning-wheels in cottage doors.
In the city's heat and toil,
Here amidst the smoke and oil,
Where the steady fires burn,
And the crank-shafts turn and turn,
Where the dash-pots clank and clash,
And the switches snap and flash,
If you only feel and see,
Here is also poetry.
Swing and thrust and rise and fall,
There's a harmony in all;
Every piece its place and time,
Working out the perfect rhyme.
Brushes on the copper ring,
High and clear the note they sing,
Playing something new and strange
On the theme of endless change,
Telling how the wire wheel,
Moving in its frame of steel,
Helps transform the latent might
Of coal-beds into life and light.
He who built me, coil and pole,
Knows me to the very soul, --
Spools and windings, shaft and core,
What each part is fashioned for.
I'm a servant to his hand;
But he doesn't understand
What the wires take from me,
What the fire-flow can be.
Flooding through the buried mains,
Pulsing in the metal veins,
Goes my subtle, silent stream,
And I follow in a dream
Into distant thoroughfares,
Into cellars, up the stairs,
Drive the loom and sew the dress,
Cut the paper, move the press,
Brighten up the printed page,
Light the chancel and the stage.
Brushed on the copper ring
Gently glide and softly sing;
I must never show a sign
Of the mighty task that's mine.
Dynamos that rasp and spark
Leave the city in the dark;
Wrapped around my iron drum,
Quietly I croon and hum.



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