As livid scars upon pale skin,
the grey,abandoned mills,
reminders cruel to all who live
in valley floors they fill.

Their windows long-since shattered,
and their Jenny's long-since spun,
the mills now stand as testament
to battles lost and won.

As shuttles flew and wheels turned,
the coffers brimmed with ease,
whilst workers lives were filled with
squalor, hunger and disease.

In 'revolution', victory came,
a vast technology,
machines that stretched the 'empire' wide,
as far as eyes could see.

And though upon this 'empire' bold
the sun could never set,
the shepherds left their flocks to rot
and long for clement death.



This poem was inspired by the decline of the textile industry in northern England over the past century,and also by the atrocious conditions borne by workers in the mills and in their homes.As you may know,this was where the Industrial Revolution started and it was this industry that helped fuel the reach of the British Empire,the empire 'upon which the sun never set',because it stretched across the globe.However,whilst vast riches were made for the few,the many suffered from poverty the like of which is hard to imagine,and which was documented in Engels' famous work 'The Conditions of the Working Classes'. Line 6: A 'Spinning Jenny' was a hi-tech textile machine of the day.