Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Steam Shovel

Eunice Tietjens

BENEATH my window in a city street

A monster lairs, a creature huge and grim

And only half believed: the strength of him—

Steel-strung and fit to meet

The strength of earth—

Is mighty as men’s dreams that conquer force.

Steam belches from him. He is the new birth

Of old Behemoth, late-sprung from the source

Whence Grendel sprang, and all the monster clan

Dead for an age, now born again of man.

The iron head,

Set on a monstrous, jointed neck,

Glides here and there, lifts, settles on the red

Moist floor, with nose dropped in the dirt, at beck

Of some incredible control.

He snorts, and pauses couchant for a space,

Then slowly lifts, and tears the gaping hole

Yet deeper in earth’s flank. A sudden race

Of loosened earth and pebbles trickles there

Like blood-drops in a wound.

But he, the monster, swings his load around—

Weightless it seems as air.

His mammoth jaw

Drops widely open with a rasping sound,

And all the red earth vomits from his maw.

O thwarted monster, born at man’s decree,

A lap-dog dragon, eating from his hand

And doomed to fetch and carry at command,

Have you no longing ever to be free?

In warm, electric days to run a-muck,

Ranging like some mad dinosaur,

Your fiery heart at war

With this strange world, the city’s restless ruck,

Where all drab things that toil, save you alone,

Have life;

And you the semblance only, and the strife?

Do you not yearn to rip the roots of stone

Of these great piles men build,

And hurl them down with shriek of shattered steel,

Scorning your own sure doom, so you may feel,

You too, the lust with which your fathers killed?

Or is your soul in very deed so tame,

The blood of Grendel watered to a gruel,

That you are well content

With heart of flame

Thus placidly to chew your cud of fuel

And toil in peace for man’s aggrandizement?

Poor helpless creature of a half-grown god,

Blind of yourself and impotent!

At night,

When your forerunners, sprung from quicker sod,

Would range through primal woods, hot on the scent,

Or wake the stars with amorous delight,

You stand, a soiled, unwieldy mass of steel,

Black in the arc-light, modern as your name,

Dead and unsouled and trite;

Till I must feel

A quick creator’s pity for your shame:

That man, who made you and who gave so much,

Yet cannot give the last transforming touch;

That with the work he cannot give the wage—

For day, no joy of night,

For toil, no ecstasy of primal rage.