The Andesite Age

Good evening, dear fellows, allow me to state,

I once was a miner with scarcely a plate.

No manor, no fortune, no title, no throne.

Just dirt on my trousers and stone for a home.

I began as a commoner, pickaxe in hand,

A curious gentleman lost in the land.

With timber and cobble I fashioned my keep,

Whilst skeleton chaps tried to bury me deep.

Then down in the quarry, beneath granite and stone,

I discovered andesite, peculiar in tone.

A curious mineral, a marvellous find,

The very foundation of progress refined.

With iron extracted from caverns below,

I crafted contraptions that whirred and would go.

A cog and a crank, a mechanism grand,

The future was forged by my very own hand.

Oh, what a magnificent marvel I've made,

A brass-bound dominion of piston and blade.

The railways now thunder, the factories bloom,

My empire advances beneath a blackened plume.

I summoned the water wheel, harnessed the stream,

Constructed machines that exceeded a dream.

With shafts and with bearings, with pullies and gears,

I conquered the workload of countless long years.

The press and the mixer, the drill and the mill,

All dancing precisely according to will.

No longer a miner with dust on my sleeve,

I became the architect none could perceive.

The locomotives arrive with a terrible roar,

Iron-clad serpents from station to shore.

The villages trembled, the kingdoms took heed,

For industry followed wherever I'd lead.

Then upward I gazed with a gentleman's pride,

And fashioned great vessels to conquer the sky.

With engines of brass and contraptions sublime,

My airships ascended through cloud and through time.

The heavens were conquered, the factories grew,

The skies filled with smoke of a permanent hue.

The cities below cast in shadow and shade,

By the empire of industry I'd carefully made.

Now seated upon my mechanical throne,

I govern a world I have wholly transformed.

Clockwork attendants patrol every street,

With iron determination and movements precise.

No voice dares oppose, no hand dares defy,

The order I forged beneath smoke-filled skies.

From humble beginnings, from gravel and stone,

I built an empire.. and claimed it for my own.