Use this link to hear my reading:

<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/d0d5a48vrexzvr8/Factory%20windows.mp3?dl=0" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-decoration: underline;">Factory Windows are Always Broken</a>

or https://tinyurl.com/y99el994

"Factory Windows are Always Broken," by Vachel Lindsay, 1914.

Since my purpose is in posting this is to help learners with ear training, I won't give the transcription of the poem. See if you can understand it just by listening. However if you give up, you can find it online at

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1021/1021-h/1021-h.htm#2H_4_0041

In this poem, I think Lindsay--writing in 1914--was saying that there must have been something wrong in US society to make people hate factories so much. At the time, the US was in an economic depression following the Panic of 1907.

Difficult words and references:

heaving: throwing something large and heavy

cinders: burned-out pieces of coal

Yahoo: vulgar and brutal; it is a reference to a race of terrible beings in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. (Think of the orcs in The Lord of the Rings). This use is old-fashioned and not often heard today.

chapel: a small church building or place of worship, often with beautiful stained-glass windows

something is rotten in Denmark: This is a difficult cultural reference to explain! Shakespeare's most famous play, Hamlet, takes place in Denmark. At one point a character says "something is rotten in the state of Denmark." This is a very famous line, and it has become a catchphrase. In the US. if something is literally rotten and smells bad, or if a situation is bad, instead of saying "something is rotten," someone may say "something is rotten in Denmark" as a way of saying something is really rotten.