The Steam Threshing-Machine With the Straw Carrier
Flush with the pond the lurid furnace burned
At eve, while smoke and vapour filled the yard;
The gloomy winter sky was dimly starred,
The fly-wheel with a mellow murmur turned;
While, ever rising on its mystic stair
In the dim light, from secret chambers borne,
The straw of harvest, severed from the corn,
Climbed, and fell over, in the murky air.
I thought of mind and matter, will and law,
And then of him, who set his stately seal
Of Roman words on all the forms he saw
Of old-world hubandry: I could but feel
With what a rich precision he would draw
The endless ladder, and the booming wheel!
Did any seer of ancient time forebode
This mighty engine, which we daily see
Accepting our full harvests, like a god,
With clouds about his shoulders,—it might be
Some poet-husbandman, some lord of verse,
Old Hesiod, or the wizard Mantuan
Who catalogued in rich hexameters
The Rake, the Roller, and the mystic Van :
Or else some priest of Ceres, it might seem.
Who witness'd, as he trod the silent fane,
The notes and auguries of coming change,
Of other ministrants in shrine and grange, —
The sweating statue, and her sacred wain
Low-booming with the prophecy of steam !
Flush with the pond the lurid furnace burned
At eve, while smoke and vapour filled the yard;
The gloomy winter sky was dimly starred,
The fly-wheel with a mellow murmur turned;
While, ever rising on its mystic stair
In the dim light, from secret chambers borne,
The straw of harvest, severed from the corn,
Climbed, and fell over, in the murky air.
I thought of mind and matter, will and law,
And then of him, who set his stately seal
Of Roman words on all the forms he saw
Of old-world hubandry: I could but feel
With what a rich precision he would draw
The endless ladder, and the booming wheel!
Did any seer of ancient time forebode
This mighty engine, which we daily see
Accepting our full harvests, like a god,
With clouds about his shoulders,—it might be
Some poet-husbandman, some lord of verse,
Old Hesiod, or the wizard Mantuan
Who catalogued in rich hexameters
The Rake, the Roller, and the mystic Van :
Or else some priest of Ceres, it might seem.
Who witness'd, as he trod the silent fane,
The notes and auguries of coming change,
Of other ministrants in shrine and grange, —
The sweating statue, and her sacred wain
Low-booming with the prophecy of steam !