Pittsburgh
By James Oppenheim.
Over his face his gray hair drifting, hides his Labor-glory in smoke,
Strange through his breath the soot is sifting, his feet are buried in coal and coke.
By night hands twisted and lured in fires, by day hands blackened with grime and oil,
He toils at the foundries and never tires, and ever and ever his lot is toil.
He speeds his soul till his body wrestles with terrible tonnage and terrible time,
Out through the yards and over the trestles the flat-cars clank and the engines chime,
His mills through windows seem eaten with fire, high cranes travel, his ingots roll,
And billet and wheel and whistle and wire shriek with the speeding up of his soul.
Lanterns with reds and greens a-glisten wave the way and the head-light glares,
The back-bent laborers glance and listen and out through the night the tail-light flares—
Deep in the mills like a tipping cradle the huge converter turns on its wheel
And sizzling spills in the ten-ton ladle a golden water of molten steel.
Yet screwed with toil his low face searches shadow-edged fires and whilted pits,
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