THE SONG OF THE PRINTING PRESS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18500, 22 February 1930, Page 9 (Supplement)

THE SONG OF THE PRINTING PRESS.

See the league-long web of paper flying free ; See the glistening ink-black rollers pressing tight To plates whereon the letters are fast-bound in molten fetters, Letters telling tales of human wrong and right, Wrong and right, With a beatific bending to the right.

When the cylinders are humming like the wind, And the paper spindle’s whizzing through its stays, When the darting tapes are guiding sheets in sight and sheets in hiding, Then your comprehension’s tangled in a maze, In the maze, In the mighty, heaving, whirring, burring maze.

All completed, all accomplished is the toil In the service of the great minds and the less; Now, arising grand before us, in a sweeping, swell ing chorus, Hear the diapason boomings of the press, Of the press, And the full-toned vox humana of the Press.

“Of the mighty ones of Cosmos I was born, Of the labour and the will that ride the earth; In their energy kinetic hear you- not the cry prophetic, ‘Here is scientific wonder at its birth’ At its birth, lam but a trumpet flourish for the works of greater worth.

“I am looking, I am looking to the light That is i Heading in its high auroral curve; Whether God-made, whether man-made, lam but the humble handmaid Of the people, and the people I would serve, I would serve, For the highest of all missions is to serve.”

—By Bailey Milliard, in “Songs of the Press and other Adventures.” £