Clatter of shuttle and rattle of looms <br />Shattered the peace of the weaving rooms <br />In Yorkshire and Lancashire’s high rolling hills, <br />Where masses of mill lasses chattered in mills <br />Tripping and clopping in crude wooden clogs <br />Under the fast-running drive-belts and cogs <br />Which powered machinery, oily and rough, <br />Manufacturing worsted and cotton and cloth. <br /> <br />Yet the beckoning fingers of time draw me back <br />To explore once again where the smoke billowed black <br />From towering chimneys, in days long-since gone <br />When millworkers hustled and bustled along <br />To clock in each morning for a pittance of pay <br />To work uncomplaining, so far from today <br />Where whiz-kids in cities dash past, crushed by rush <br />But mills are now stilled in an ear-splitting hush. <br /> <br />And no bobbins and spindles and shuttles are left <br />Where weavers once tended the warp and the weft <br />To fettle to fabric with fine-spun thin threads <br />But axes have fallen and silenced the sheds <br />And only the bleat of the sheep on the hills <br />Gives a musical beat to the crumbling mills <br />And the tumbling becks from each steep-sided dale <br />Add their echoing whispers as memories fail.<br /><br />C Richard Miles<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cotton-mills/
