Locke sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.

These lines juxtapose Enlightenment rationalism (“Locke”) and the biblical Eden (“The Garden”) with the Industrial Revolution (“spinning-jenny”), suggesting a mythic fall from an organic, sacred order into mechanized modernity. The image of God taking the spinning-jenny “out of his side” parodies the Genesis creation of Eve from Adam’s rib: instead of a companion, modernity births a machine. The tone is sardonic and prophetic, implying that a philosophical shift toward empiricism and material explanation helps usher in a world where nature and innocence “die,” replaced by industrial production. The compression into nursery-rhyme quatrain heightens the sting: a simple sing-song form delivers a bleak cultural diagnosis.