A Mill Picture

Her wrinkled face is gazing

    Through the tangle of the looms,

Where the belts and twisted gearing

    Make a net-work in the rooms.

Does she thing of fair Killarney?

    Does she dream some old love tune

Is singing through the shuttles

    In the mill this afternoon?

Do the long white walls grow misty?

    Do the years troop fast away?

Does she smell again the clover

    As it dies among the hay?

Is there still a bit of glamour

    Of her youth about her head?

Does she long for old companions

    Who are numbered with the dead?

So the superintendent wonders,

    As he sees her through the looms,

Where the belts and twisted gearings

    Make a net-work in the rooms.

Marshal Putnam Thompson

Index to poems in the collection by Marshall Putnam Thompson