The little crafts! How soon they die!

In cottage doors no shuttle clicks;

The hand-loom has been ousted by

A large concern with lots more sticks.

The throb of pistons beats around;

Great chimneys rise on Thames's banks;

The same phenomena are found

In Sheffield. (Yorks) and Oldham (Lancs).

No longer now the housewife makes

Her rare preserves, for what's the good?

The factory round the corner fakes

Raspberry jam with chips of wood.

'Tis so with what we eat and wear,

Our bread, the boots wherein we splosh

'Tis so with what I deemed most fair,

Most virginal of all—the Wash.

'Tis this that chiefly, when I chant,

Fulfils my breast with sighs of ruth,

To think that engines can supplant

The Amazons I loved in youth.

That not with tender care, as erst

By spinster females fancy-free,

These button-holes of mine get burst

Before the shift comes back to me;

That mere machines, and not a maid

With fingers fatuously plied,

The collars and the cuffs have frayed

That still excoriate my hide;

That steam reduces to such states

What once was marred by human skill;

That socks are sundered from their mates

By means of an electric mill;

That not by Cupid's coy advance

(Some crone conniving at the fraud),

But simply by mechanic chance,

I get this handkerchief marked "Maud."

This is, indeed, a striking change;

I sometimes wonder if the world

Gets better as the skies grow strange

With coils of smoke about them curled.

If the old days were not the best

Ere printed formulas conveyed

Sorrow about that silken vest

For all eternity mislaid;

Ere yet the unwieldy motor-van

Came clattering round the kerbstone's brink,

Its driver dreaming some new plan

To make my mauve pyjamas shrink.

Evoe.