Clatter of shuttle and rattle of looms

Shattered the peace of the weaving rooms

In Yorkshire and Lancashire’s high rolling hills,

Where masses of mill lasses chattered in mills

Tripping and clopping in crude wooden clogs

Under the fast-running drive-belts and cogs

Which powered machinery, oily and rough,

Manufacturing worsted and cotton and cloth.

Yet the beckoning fingers of time draw me back

To explore once again where the smoke billowed black

From towering chimneys, in days long-since gone

When millworkers hustled and bustled along

To clock in each morning for a pittance of pay

To work uncomplaining, so far from today

Where whiz-kids in cities dash past, crushed by rush

But mills are now stilled in an ear-splitting hush:

So no bobbins and spindles and shuttles are left

Where weavers once tended the warp and the weft

To fettle to fabric with fine-spun thin threads

Since axes have fallen and silenced the sheds

And only the bleat of the sheep on the hills

Gives a musical beat to the crumbling mills

And the tumbling becks from each steep-sided dale

Add their echoing whispers as memories fail.