At The India Docks. A Memory Of August, 1883 Poem Rhyme Scheme

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The spectacle of the life of the London Dock labourers is one of the most terrible examples of the logical outcome of the present social system In the six great metropolitan docks over men are employed the great bulk of whom are married and have families By the elaborate system of sub contracts their wages have been driven down to d d and even d for the few hours they are employed making the average weekly earnings of a man amount to and even shillings a week Hundreds and hundreds of lives are lost or ruined every year by the perilous nature of the work and absolutely without compensation Yet so fierce is the competition that men are not unfrequently maimed or even killed in the desperate struggles at the gates for the tickets of employment guaranteeing a pay which often does not amount to more than a few pence The streets and houses inhabited by this unfortunate class are of the lowest kind haunts of vice disease and death and the monopolistic companies are thus directly able to profit by their wholesale demoralization by ruthlessly crushing out through the contractors all efforts at organisation on the part of the men To see these immense docks the home of that more immense machine British Commerce crowded with huge and stately ships steamers and sailors the first in the world and to watch with intelligent eyes by what means the colossal work of loading and unloading them is carried out this is to face a sacrificial orgy of human life childhood youth manhood womanhood and age with everything that makes them beautiful and ennobling and not merely a misery and a curse far more appalling than any Juggernaut progress or the human holocausts that were offered up to Moloch	A
	-
I stood in the ghastly gleaming night by the swollen sullen flow	B
Of the dreadful river that rolls her tides through the City of Wealth and Woe	B
And mine eyes were heavy with sleepless hours and dry with desperate grief	C
And my brain was throbbing and aching and mine anguish had no relief	C
For never a moment no not one through all the dreary day	D
And thro' all the weary night forlorn would the pitiless pulses stay	D
Of the thundering great Machinery that such insistence had	E
As it crushed out human hearts and souls that it slowly drove me mad	E
	-
And there in the dank and foetid mist as I silent and tearless stood	F
And the river's exhalations sweating forth their muddy blood	G
Breathed full on my face and poisoned me like the slow putrescent drain	H
That carries away from the shambles the refuse of flesh and brain	H
There rose up slowly before me in the dome of the city's light	I
A vast and shadowy Substance with shafts and wheels of might	I
Tremendous ruthless fatal and I knew the visible shape	J
Of that thundering great Machinery from which there was no escape	J
	-
It stood there high in the heavens fronting the face of God	K
And the spray it sprinkled had blasted the green and flowery sod	K
All round where through stony precincts its Cyclopean pillars fell	L
To its adamantine foundations that were fixed in the womb of hell	L
And the birds that wild and whirling and moth like flew to its glare	M
Were struck by the flying wheel spokes and maimed and murdered there	M
And the dust that swept about its black panoply overhead	N
And the din of it seemed to shatter and scatter the sheeted dead	N
	-
But mine eyes were fixed on the people that sought this horrible den	O
And they mounted in thronged battalions children and women and men	O
Right out from the low horizons more far than the eye could see	P
From the north and the south and the east and the west they came perpetually	P
Some silent some raving some sobbing some laughing some cursing some crying	Q
Some alone some with others some struggling some dragging the dead and the dying	Q
Up to the central Wheel enormous with its wild devouring breath	R
That winnowed the livid smoke clouds and the sickening fume of death	R
	-
Then suddenly as I watched it all a keen wind blew amain	O
And the air grew clearer and purer and I could see it plain	O
How under the central Wheel a black stone Altar stood	F
And a great gold Idol upon it was gleaming like fiery blood	G
And there in front of the Altar was a huge round lurid Pit	S
And the thronged battalions were marching to the yawning mouth of it	S
In the clangour of the Machinery and the Wheel's devouring breath	R
That winnowed the livid smoke clouds and the sickening fume of death	R
	-
And once again as I gazed there and the keen wind still blew on	O
I saw the shape of the Idol like a king turned carrion	O
Yet crowned and more terrific thus for his human fleshly loss	T
And with one clenched hand he brandished a lash and the other held up a cross	T
And all around the Altar were seated joyous and free	P
In garments richly coloured and choice a goodly company	P
Eating and drinking and wantoning like gods that scorned to know	O
Of the thundering great Machinery and the crowds and the Pit below	O
	-
Ah Christ the sights and the sounds there that every hour befell	L
Would wring the heart of the devils spinning ropes of sand in hell	L
But not the insolent Revellers in their old lascivious ease	U
Children hollow eyed starving consumed alive with disease	U
Boys and men tortured to fiends and branded with shuddering fire	V
Girls and women shrieking caught and whored and trampled to death in the mire	W
Babyhood youth and manhood and womanhood that might have been	O
Kneaded a bloody pulp to feed the gold grinding murderous Machine	O
	-
And still with aching eyeballs I stared at that hateful sight	I
At the long dense lines of the people and the shafts and wheels of might	I
When slowly slowly emerging I saw a great Globe rise	X
Blood red on the dim horizon and it swam up into the skies	X
But whether indeed it were the sun or the moon I could not say	D
For I knew not now in my watching if it were night or day	D
But when that Great Globe steadied above the central Wheel	Y
The thronged battalions wavered and paused and an awful silence fell	L
	-
Then I know not how but so it was in a moment the flash of an eye	Z
A murmur ran and rose to a voice and the voice to a terrible cry	Z
Enough enough It has had enough We will march no more till we drop	A2
In the furnace Pit Give us food Give us rest Though the accursed Machinery stop	A2
And then with a shout of angry fear the Revellers sprang to their feet	B2
And the call was for cannon and cavalry for rifle and bayonet	C2
And one rose up a leader of them lifting a threatening rod	K
And Stop the Machinery he yelled you might as well stop God	K
	-
But the terrible thunder cry replied If this indeed must be	P
It is YOU should be cast to the furnace Pit to feed the Machine not WE	P
And the central Wheel enormous slowed down in groaning plight	I
And all the aerial movement ceased of the shafts and wheels of might	I
And a superhuman clamour leaped madly to where overhead	N
The great Globe swung in the gathering gloom portentous huge blood red	N
But my brain whirled round and my blinded eyes no more could see or know	O
Till I struggling seemed to awake at last by the swollen sullen flow	O
Of the dreadful river that rolls her tides through the City of Wealth and Woe	O

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

At The India Docks. A Memory Of August, 1883 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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