Classic Poem

All day in the shop the machines roar so wildly
That often I sink and am lost in the din;
Sunken and lost in the terrible tumult,
The soul in me ceases. ... I am a machine.
I work and I work and I work without reckoning,
Making, creating — endless the task!
For what? And for whom? I know not, I ask not;
Machine cannot answer, machine cannot ask.

No, here is no feeling, no judgment, no reason;
This labor, the bloody, the endless, suppressed
The noblest and finest, the truest and richest,
The highest, the purest, the humanly best.
The minutes, the hours, the days and the seasons,
They vanish, swift-fleeting like straws in a gale.
I drive the wheel madly as though to overtake them,
I chase without wisdom, or wit, or avail.

The clock in the workshop, it rests not a moment;
It points on, and ticks on: Eternity — Time.
And once someone told me the clock has a meaning —
Its pointing and ticking has reason and rhyme.
And this too he told me — or had I been dreaming? —
The clock wakens life in us, forces unseen;
And something besides. ... I forget what; oh, ask not!
I know not, I know not, I am a machine.

At times, when I listen, I hear the clock plainly;
The reason of old — the old meaning — is gone.
The maddening pendulum urges me forward
To labor and labor and still labor on.
The tick of the clock is the voice of my master;
The face of the clock is the face of my foe.
The clock — I can hear, I can hear, how it drives me!
It calls me " Machine! " and it cries to me " Sew! "

At noon, when about me the wild tumult ceases,
And gone is the master, and I sit apart,
And dawn in my brain is beginning to glimmer,
The wound comes agape at the core of my heart;
And tears, bitter tears flow; tears that are scalding;
They moisten my dry, meagre dinner — my bread;
They choke me — I cannot! my bread lies uneaten;
Oh, heavy the labor! Oh, bitter the need!

The workshop at mid-day — it is not a workshop:
A battlefield — bloody; a lull on the plain.
Around and about me the corpses are lying,
And out of the earth cries the blood of the slain.
A moment — and listen! The signal is sounded:
The dead rise again, and renewed is the fight
They struggle, these corpses; for strangers, for strangers!
They struggle, they fall, and they sink into night.

I gaze on the battlefield; wrath flames within me,
And Vengeance and Pain stir their fires in me.
The clock — now I hear it aright! — it is crying:
" An end to the bondage! Arise, and be free! "
It quickens my feeling, it quickens my reason;
It points to the moments, the precious, that fly
Oh, worthless am I if I longer am silent,
And lost am I, lost! if in silence I die.

The man in me sleeping begins to awaken;
The thing that was slave into slumber has passed:
Now, up with the man in me! Up and be doing!
No misery more! Here is freedom at last!
When sudden: A whistle! — the boss — an alarum! —
I sink in the slime of the stagnant routine;
There's tumult ... they struggle. ... Oh, lost is my ego —
I know not, I care not, I am a machine! ...