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.

Oh, patient 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 sires 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,
Ranged through primeval woods, hot on the scent,
Or waked 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.

O mountain Stream! the Shepherd and his Cot
Are privileg'd Inmates of deep solitude:
Nor would the nicest Anchorite exclude
A Field or two of brighter green, or Plot
Of tillage-ground, that seemeth like a spot
Of stationary sunshine: thou hast view'd
These only, Duddon! with their paths renew'd
By fits and starts, yet this contents thee not.
Thee hath some awful Spirit impell'd to leave,
Utterly to desert, the haunts of men,
Though simple thy Companions were and few;
And through this wilderness a passage cleave
Attended but by thy own Voice, save when
The Clouds and Fowls of the air thy way pursue.