AND call they this Improvement? -- to have changed, My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore, Where Nature's face is banished and estranged, And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more; Whose banks, that sweetened May-day's breath before, Lie sere and leafless now in summer's beam, With sooty exhalations covered o'er; And for the dasied greensward, down thy stream Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam! Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains; One heart free tasting Nature's breath and bloom Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon's gains. But whither goes that wealth, and gladdening whom? See, left but life enough and breathing-room The hunger and the hope of life to feel, Yon pale Mechanic bending o'er his loom, And Childhood's self as at Ixion's wheel, From morn till midnight tasked to earn its little meal. Is this Improvement? -- where the human breed Degenerate as they swarm and overflow, Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed, And man competes with man, like foe with foe, Till Death, that thins them, scarce seems public wo! Improvement! -- smiles it in the poor man's eyes, Or blooms it on the cheek of Labor? -- No -- To gorge a few with Trade's precarious prize, We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies. Nor call that evil slight; God has not given This passion to the heart of man in vain, For Earth's green face, the untainted air of Heaven, And all the bliss of Nature's rustic reign. For not alone our frame imbibes a stain From foetid skies; the spirit's healthy pride Fades in their gloom. -- And therefore I complain, That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst glide, My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic Clyde! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AN ANCIENT TO ANCIENTS by THOMAS HARDY CRITICS AND CONNOISSEURS by MARIANNE MOORE DORIS; A PASTORAL by ARTHUR JOSEPH MUNBY MONNA INNOMINATA, A SONNET OF SONNETS: 2 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI UNDERWOODS: BOOK 1: 6. A VISIT FROM THE SEA by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 47 by ALFRED TENNYSON OVERTURE TO A DANCE OF LOCOMOTIVES by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS |