The Skies can't keep their secret — Air Pollution

Air pollution is the secret told by the smoke to hills, orchards, and daffodils, hinted by sapphire fellows and new-fashioned world, workers and factories.

The Skies can't keep their secret! ¹
They tell it to the Hills－
The Hills just tell the Orchards－
And they－the Daffodils!

A Bird－by chance－that goes that way－⁵
Soft overhears the whole－
If I should bribe the little Bird－
Who knows but she would tell?

I think I won't－however－⁹
It's finer－not to know－
If Summer were an Axiom－
What sorcery had Snow?

So keep your secret－Father! ¹³
I would not－if I could,
Know what the Sapphire Fellows, do,
In your new-fashioned world!

(F.213/J.191)

[1] Skies, secret:: smoke in the sky that revealed the secret of factories.
[2, 3, 4] Hills, Orchards, Daffodils:: they have one thing in common, all being polluted.
[5, 8] Bird, she, tell:: a bird flying through the smoke; or a girl walking over the hills.
[11] Summer:: the highest efficiency of factories.
[12] Snow:: white, pure and clean.
[13, 14] Father, would not:: a complaint of pollution to the dominator of the new world.
[15] Sapphire Fellows:: workers with blue clothes.
[16] new-fashioned world:: a world of engines, coal, and chimneys.

The sweet little glen below it turned into a reservoir to supply a monstrous factory — dingy and cheerless as a bastille — with a row of pert chimney-stalks, belching forth in the face of heaven columns of smoke and pollution, and stinking horribly in the morning air. ─ Adeline by Osborn W. Trenery Heighway (1854)

But while carbonic acid gas is not the offensive substance it has often been taken as the standard measure of air pollution. ─ Annual Report of the Superintendent of Health (1857)