Автор: | Киплинг Д. Р. |
Категория: | Стихотворение |
THE SECRET OF THE MACHINES
Modern Machinery
We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine, |
We were melted in the furnace and the pit - |
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design, |
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit. |
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask, |
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play: |
And now, if you will set us to our task, |
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day! |
We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive, |
We can print and plough and weave and heat and light, |
We can run and race and swim and fly and dive. |
We can see and hear and count and read and write! |
Would you call a friend from half across the world? |
If you’ll let us have his name and town and state, |
You shall see and hear your cracking question hurled |
Across the arch of heaven while you wait. |
Has he answered? Does he need you at his side? |
You can start this very evening if you choose, |
And take the Western Ocean in the stride |
Of seventy thousand horses and some screws! |
You will find the Mauretania at the quay, |
Till her captain turns the lever ’neath his hand, |
And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea. |
Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head |
And lay their new-cut forests at your feet? |
Do you want to turn a river in its bed, |
Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat? |
Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down |
From the never-failing cisterns of the snows, |
To work the mills and tramways in your town, |
And irrigate your orchards as it flows? |
It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills! |
Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake, |
As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills, |
And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake. |
But remember, please, the Law by which we live, |
We are not built to comprehend a lie, |
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. |
If you make a slip in handling us you die! |
We are greater that the Peoples or the Kings - |
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods! - |
Our touch can alter all created things, |
Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes, |
It will vanish and the stars will shine again, |
Because, for all our power and weight and size, |