Born close to Brunel’s broad gauge at South Marston,
While Richard Jefferies measured the red brick growth
Of New Swindon’s terraced street advance
Towards ‘The Gamekeeper at Home’,
You studied express trains from farm and field,
Hammering on their way to Paddington,
Dreaming of forge and furnace and steam hammer:
And when you first walked through the tunnel,
Fourteen years of age, a rivet hotter,
A frame builder’s boy, a furnace boy,
A self-taught student of poetry, folklore and the classics,
Walked without any condescension,
Through a factory of ten thousand men:
Stampers, painters, watchmen, carpenters,
Carriage finishers and upholsterers,
Washers down, cushion beaters, ash wheelers,
Wagon builders, storemen, smiths, turners,
Boilermen, platers, riveters, labourers,
Fitters, firemen, drivers and cleaners,
Pattern makers, moulders, bricklayers, clerks.
You ate your snap in solitude, though,
Away from the loud quick kick-about,
Composing a poem within the piston’s din,
Wary of the foreman’s workshop power:
You saw the molten burns, the short-time working,
The union men sidelined by the piles of ingots,
The speed-up of machines in stifling smoke and steam,
The piece rates cut in the coal and the dust …
You walked out past the old iron rails and the ballast,
Past carriage and wagon, axle, wheel and tyre,
Past mountains of coal, pig, bar and cast iron,
Past the rolling mill, the block, the dies, the tar,
The gleaming steel, the shearings, clippings,
Wheelbarrows, ash pits, pinchings, drillings,
The clinker, the canal, and the clocking out;
You then walked four miles home to South Marston,
See to the garden; sit with Mary at twilight;
Compose your verse; translate the classics;
Study the stars, and the household accounts;
And the next day, before the factory hooter’s call,
You would walk four miles into ‘The Works’,
Once more composing verse,
To clock in:
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Was born in 1877 in a village close to the Wilts and Berks canal. He spent his working life in a factory close to the North Wilts canal. He, and his wife Mary, built a cottage in the 1920s with stone and brick wheeled a mile from a disused lock on the Wilts and Berks.
His poetry and prose reflect the amalgam of industrial and rural life, so characteristic of the canal age of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His rural poems are more redolent of John Clare in tone. Here are a few examples taken from his poetry, to show this. His book, Life in a Railway Factory, about working in Swindon Works before the Great War, pulls no punches in depicting the GWR ‘inside’ the factory walls: a contrast to its advertising.
Snatches of lines from his rural poems, and
two industrial ones:
‘Here the channel of the Avon, there the valley of the Horse,
North the flowing Thames arises flowery-banked and jewel-bordered,
East the shallow silvery Kennett chimes along its reedy course;
Meadows here, and blooming orchards, groves of poplar, walls of willow,
Spreading oak and elm and chestnut, arms of branches interlaced
With the honey bean and clover, and the coltsfoot sweet and yellow …’
‘Oftimes on Liddington’s peak I like to think and lie,
And muse upon the former days and ancient things gone by …
To woo Dick Jefferies from his dreams on Sorrow’s pillow tossed,
And walk with him upon the ridge and pacify his ghost.
Anon to woody Savernake or Marlborough I repair
To wander in the forest glooms and take my pleasure there,
There to inhale the morning breath, or brush away the dews,
Down the long corridor and aisles and in the avenues …
Through peaceful Uffington I steer and westward in my course,
And sally through the pleasant lanes, up the Valley of the Horse,
Musing upon the woody elms, the meadows and the streams,
Filled with all nameless, dear delights, pure flowery thoughts and dreams.
And O, how sweet, when direst grief afflicts the withering soul,
To wander in the fields unseen beside the flowery Cole,
Down the long avenues of elms, o’er many a verdant patch,
Or by the old forked willow-tree there underneath the hatch,
Or listen to the gurgling stream, the full melodious flow,
Down the long sliding pavement to the silent pool below! …
Too soon the vision steals apace, hard bitter pangs we feel,
Joy’s bubbles break and pass, Time turns his heavy wheel,
Dear quiet Cole, meandering down flowery banks and hems,
Bearing thy tributary-gift to placid-flowing Thames,
Many a bitter tear I’ve shed, and wanted many a joy
Since first I gamboled on thy banks, there when I was a boy …
Cold blows the drear autumnal blast, and chill upon my head,
Thou only, dearest Cole, remain’st, you shadowy pools and rills …’
‘Down by Sevenhampton’s waving fields there flows
A gentle-minded stream with steady motion,
That underneath the emerald-tinted boughs
Strives towards the drifting ocean.
Blue with forget-me-nots its bank appear,
And fragrant meadow-sweet and hawthorn bushes,
The lovely golden iris blossoms here,
And many flowering rushes.
On either side the spacious meads are spread
With luscious grasses; earth’s warm scented pillow;
The silver poplar whispers overhead
Down to the rustling willow.
The broad wide margin, rich with varied glow,
With starry daisies strewn, and golden patches,
Waves in the atmosphere and faints below
The weather-beaten hatches.
The bright marsh marigold, opening to the sun
Its large full radiance, dispelling shadows,
Passes the glorious wealth of beauty on
To the imperial meadows.
The purple cranesbill and the ox-eye bloom,
Wild ragged robin here and purple rattle;
The sweet herb-willow breathes a rich perfume
To the water’s merry prattle.
Dear winding river, companion of my thought,
Whose flowery banks have shared my exaltation,
And now my years are with some sadness fraught,
Dost pity my vexation;
Long may’st thou wander under sun and shade,
And dream thy hours away in ease and leisure!
May all thy summer flowers be re-arrayed
In full, unstinted pleasure!’
‘The friendship of a hill I know
Above the rising down,
Where the balmy souther breezes blow
But a mile or two from town;
The budded broom and heather
Are wedded on its breast,
And I love to wander thither
When the sun is in the west.’
‘Up the furnace door was lifted,
And the searching glare shot out,
Lighting up the dusty rafters,
And the alleys round about;
Shining on the workmen’s faces
In the twilight ghastly pale …
Now the heated mass of metal,
Hoisted by the creaking crane,
Slowly leaves the smoking furnace
And the door descends again;
While a molten liquid torrent,
Running from the blazing ore,
Like a fiery, hissing serpent,
Writhes along the iron floor,
As the crane swings, and the pulley,
And the chain jolts to and fro …
“Ready now?” “Aye! All is ready.”
And the blows begin to pour,
And the rushing sparks and splinters
Rain in torrents on the floor …
While the forger and his helpmates,
With a deft, mechanic skill,
Turn and shape the glowing metal
To the master’s cunning will;
To and fro, and back and forward,
Sideways, lengthwise, end to end,
Here, another inch of taper,
There, the radius and the bend;
Till the forgeman gives the signal,
In his eye a spark of pride,
And the hammer stops impulsive,
So the heavy blows subside.
Here the gauges and the trimmer,
All the sizes, one by one;
Cut away the useless porter,
There! The mighty task is done …’
‘Where’er you find a furnaceman, the first thing, when you meet …
ask about his ‘prenticeship, and from what part he hails –
He’s sure to come from Sunderland, from Sheffield, or from Wales …
“These fellows aint a lot of good that’s born about the South …
They’re good enough to plough the farm, and trample out the wheat,
But they never seen a furnace, and they can’t draw out a heat.”
Long, lank, and lean as any post, with skinny arms and hands –
Six feet of grimy flesh and blood, the knowing fireman stands;
Large-nosed, fair-featured, curling locks, small ears, and rounded chin,
A narrow forehead, lantern jaws, with hollow cheeks and thin,
Mouth sensitive, with shapely lips stained with the weed and dyed,
Long neck, a brown and withered face, deep-wrinkled, artful-eyed,
Blackened and blistered with the heat, and grimy with the soil –
The very feature of his trade, a sturdy son of toil.
Day after day he’s in his place, and every hour the same,
Bare-headed, naked to the waist, before the furnace flame,
His wiper at this middle hung, with little art or pride,
Or, serpent-like, about his wrist, or dangling at his side,
To brush the perspiration off that, like a river, flows
Out of the hollows of his cheeks, or trickles down his nose.
He’s always busy with the rake, the shovel, or the bar;
He’ll work the flaming furnace up as radiant as a star;
He likes to feel the twingeing heat strike through the open door,
And watch the yellow mass expand, and hear the furnace roar;
His merry eyes will cast about and twinkle with delight,
For then he knows the heat is safe, that everything is right.
First by the rattling, clinking crane the heavy ingot’s brought,
The iron door is hoisted up as quick as any thought,
A dozen ready hands are near the ponderous mass to guide,
And shove it through the open rift to the hollow place inside;
Down goes the heavy door again, and shuts the ingot in,
The curling flames have wrapped it round, the steady toils begin.
Forthwith the black and gleaming dust is gathered from the floor,
To stop each little gaping clink, and lay along the door,
That no cold draught may enter in and strike a sudden chill
Into the centre of the mass – the iron or the steel.
Now by the fireman’s ready hand the furnace bar is plied,
Careful he thrusts the pointer in and stirs the coals inside,
Now, with the ravel’s useful aid, levels the fuel down,
A little sloping to the rear, and well below the crown;
Raises the heavy damper up, a couple of points, or so,
And breaks the solid clinker in the fire-box down below;
Admits the vapour underneath straight through the hollow pile,
And fires the yellow furnace up in true Vulcanic style.
From time to time the forger’s mates invoke the rattling crane,
And turn the livid metal round, and lower it again,
Till, by-and-by, the solid mass is heated through and through,
And dazzling as the noon-day sun, and fit to take the blow.
Down goes the damper overhead, the heat’s allowed to soak,
To somewhat chill the outer part, and fit it for the stroke;
Now presently the door is raised, the creaking crane’s applied,
Out comes the spluttering, hissing mass, and lightens far and wide,
The ponderous hammer gathers strength and travels to and fro,
Until the deep foundations quake and shiver with the blow;
Another and another heat’s supplied; day after day
The fireman’s steady toil proceeds – he sweats his life away.’
‘Tis but a step to midnight; one stroke more,
One fleeting space for sorrows and farewells,
One last look backward where high Memory dwells,
Then in the untrodden path that lies before
We must push onward, ever to the shore
Toward which our utmost fate draws and compels.
Hark! From the stralit tower the merry bells
Peal as they’ve pealed a thousand times of yore.
All is banished, whether good or ill;
Our joys and sufferings, our toils and pains,
Diminish, our life’s star waxes and wanes.
Ere the dark wave closes o’er us, deep and still,
Let us fo forth fearless in mind and will,
And grapple with the future that remains.’
‘See how the tributary Cole, that flows
The summer through, mid narrow, flowery banks,
To whose impulsive stream the mill-wheel clanks,
Shaded and sweetened by the clustering rose,
Now swollen with December’s rains and snows,
Marshalling in bold array his watery ranks,
Swills through the willows, playing merry pranks,
See how the silver-crested torrent goes!
So that where late we stood beneath the hatch,
Plucking the crimson berries from the tree,
Where ripening grasses wave above the knee,
With reed, and drifting bow, and floating thatch,
The river shows in many a shining patch,
And after, widens like an inland sea.’
‘From where the rising Cotswolds rear their gentle-sloping crowns,
To where high-hearted Liddington o’ertops the rolling downs,
O give me leave to wander still, I hold the world to scorn
In the valley of my childhood, in the land where I was born.
There’s Faringdon, and Folly Hill, and Stanford-in-the-Vale,
And Uffington, and Inglesham, and Highworth hoar and hale,
And many a pleasant-seated grove, and ancient old retreat,
The humble dwelling of the poor, the palace of the great.
True, no tremendous torrent roars through hollow, cleft ravine
Or cloudy mountain-pillar over-tops the rising scene,
But there are terraces and slopes, and woody walls and bowers,
And gentle winding rivulets through purple banks of flowers.
Here burn the scented clover tops, and there the lily blows,
The crimson-hearted sorrel and the heavy-breathing rose,
As far as eye can penetrate, as long as sight can reach,
Behold! the glory of the elm, the acorn, and the beech.
Here, sitting on the high hill-side, I feel the breezes blow
A wave of summer incense from the jewelled depths below,
And sweeter than the cooling breath that’s winnowed from the sea
The gentle breathing of the vale comes floating up to me.
I see the morning sun arise, and watch the star go down,
And though my soul’s to sorrow now, it hopes to hold the crown;
I crave no other recompense, no other honour hail,
But first to walk upon the hill and slumber in the vale.
There’s something whispers in mine ear – I would not reason why –
“As long as woods and valleys live, thou hast no need to die;”
And now I recognise the voice, and tell the accent clear –
The vocal Spirit of the Vale, the mover of the sphere.
Long may I walk beside the stream, and woo the solemn burn,
Here weave the pliant willow and there pluck the folded fern,
While slender-footed Isis draws his silver-fountained force,
And winds his growing torrent down the Valley of White Horse.’