The Work Shall Fill The Mills Again. By John Plummer.

Though all is dark and dreary now,
And thousands dread the morrow;
While Labour’s pale and care-worn brow
Is clouded o’er with sorrow;
Though in the cellars dark and lone
Our famished ones are pining,
And, with a sad despairing groan,
Each dream of joy resigning: -
Yet work shall fill the mills again,
And fact’ry bells be ringing –
From every street, and court, and lane,
The anxious toilers bringing.
Though vainly for their daily bread
The toilers e’er are sighing;
Or wish that with the silent dead
Their aching forms were lying: -
Yet Peace, with laughing smiles, shall come,
And bid each worker treasure
The infant idols of his home,
And sing aloud with pleasure;
While work shall fill the mills again,
And fact’ry bells be ringing,
From every street, and court, and lane,
The anxious toilers bringing.
Each soul that wears the thorny crown
Of earthly pain and trial,
Shall kneel no more in anguish down
‘Neath Famine’s grim denial; -
But, purified, shall proudly rise
Above each old endeavour,
And learn the Right to love and prize,
And from the Wrong to sever:
When work shall fill the mills again,
And fact’ry bells be ringing,
From every street, and court, and lane,
The anxious workers bringing.
No more shall passions fierce and strong
In lowly hearts be burning;
Nor thoughts of evil ceaseless throng
To cloud each nobler yearning;
Nor class in hatred war with class,
E’er seeking vengeance blindly; -
But strive each other to surpass
In word and actions kindly, -
When work shall fill the mills again,
And fact’ry bells be ringing,
From every street, and court, and lane,
The anxious workers bringing.

Title:The Work Shall Fill the Mills Again

Author:John Plummer

Publication:Preston Guardian

Published in:Preston

Date:Nov 15 1862

Keywords:class, poverty, unemployment, work

Commentary

Containing five twelve-line stanzas, this piece is written in the ballad meter variant which alternates iambic eight- and seven-syllables lines with feminine end rhymes characterising the latter. The rhyme scheme is alternating throughout. The last four lines of the stanzas work effectively as choruses or refrains, with the hopeful element of the certainty that work will come back to the mills offset by the emphasis of the emotional anxiety of the labourers. The language is especially ‘poetic’ in the sense that it includes elisions such as ‘o’er’ to keep the meter, and frequent use of poetic syntax to maintain the rhyme scheme. There is the personification of ‘Peace’ and ‘Famine’, and arguably, through capitalisation, ‘Wrong’ and ‘Right’.

John Plummer wrote several poems on the subject of the Cotton Famine and had them published in local newspapers and his focus was always the suffering of ordinary people, often recognising the international cause of the deprivation. Whilst ostensibly the function of this piece might be to maintain the workers’ faith in the fact that the Famine will one day end, it can also be seen as an appeal to sympathy and charity, in its descriptions of hardship. The detail in the first stanza of the poor ‘pining’ in ‘cellars dark and lone’ may be domestically accurate, but it also serves to indicate that there is much more suffering under the visible surface than is at first evident. – SR.