The factory people through the fields,
    Pale men and maids and children pale,
  Listened, forgetful of the wheel,
    Till the last summons woke the vale.

  And all the mowers rising said,
    “The world has lost its dewy prime;
  Alas! the Golden age is dead,
    And we are of the Iron time!

  “The wheel and loom have left our homes,—­
    Our maidens sit with empty hands,
  Or toil beneath yon roaring domes,
    And fill the factory’s pallid bands,

  “The fields are swept as by a war,
    Our harvests are no longer blythe;
  Yonder the iron mower’s-car,
    Comes with his devastating scythe.

  “They lay us waste by fire and steel,
    Besiege us to our very doors;
  Our crops before the driving wheel
    Fall captive to the conquerors.

  “The pastoral age is dead, is dead! 
    Of all the happy ages chief;
  Let every mower bow his head,
    In token of sincerest grief.

  “And let our brows be thickly bound
    With every saddest flower that blows;
  And all our scythes be deeply wound
    With every mournful herb that grows.”

  Thus sang the mowers; and they said,
    “The world has lost its dewy prime;
  Alas! the Golden age is dead,
    And we are of the Iron time!”

  Each wreathed his scythe and twined his head;
    They took their slow way through the plain: 
  The minstrel and the maiden led
    Across the fields the solemn train.

  The air was rife with clamorous sounds,
    Of clattering factory-thundering forge,—­
  Conveyed from the remotest bounds
    Of smoky plain and mountain gorge.

  Here, with a sudden shriek and roar,
    The rattling engine thundered by;
  A steamer past the neighboring shore
    Convulsed the river and the sky.

  The brook that erewhile laughed abroad,
    And o’er one light wheel loved to play,
  Now, like a felon, groaning trod
    Its hundred treadmills night and day.

  The fields were tilled with steeds of steam,
    Whose fearful neighing shook the vales;
  Along the road there rang no team,—­
    The barns were loud, but not with flails.

  And still the mournful mowers said,
    “The world has lost its dewy prime;
  Alas! the Golden age is dead,
    And we are of the Iron time!”

* * * * *

From “The Closing Scene.”

=_408._=

  All sights were mellowed, and all sounds subdued,
    The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low;
  As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed
    His winter log, with many a muffled blow.

* * * * *

  The sentinel cock upon the hill-side crew,
    Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before,
  Silent, till some replying warder blew
    His alien horn, and then was heard no more.