Towards democracy

Sheffield 451

Right across the city, gathering, mounting, as it went,

To the Eastward side where it stood high like a wall, dblotting the land beyond,

Sullenly it crawled and spread.

Dead leaden sound of forge-hammers,

Gaping mouths of chimneys,

Lumbering and rattling of huge drays through the streets,

Pallid faces moving to and fro in myriads,

The sun, so brilliant here, to those below like a red ball. {just visible, hanging ; :

The drunkard reeling past; the file-cutter humped over dhis bench, with ceaseless skill of chisel and hammer cutting dhis hundred thousand file-teeth per day—lead-poison and @paralysis slowly creeping through his frame;

The gaunt woman in the lens-grinding shop, preparing zspectacle-glasses without end for the grindstone—in eager 3dumb mechanical haste, for her work is piecework ;

Barefoot skin-diseased children picking the ash-heaps 2 over, sallow hollow-cheeked young men, prematurely aged 3 ones,

The attic, the miserakle garret under the defective roof, The mattress on the floor, the few coals in the corner, White jets of steam, long ribbons of black smoke, Furnaces glaring through the night, beams of lurid light

ithrown obliquely up through the smoke,

Nightworkers returning home wearied in the dismal ) dawn—

Ah! how long? how long?