Keswick wives and maidens, come!  
    Bring your flax and bring your wheel,—
Spinning makes a cheerful home,
    Spinning all your cares can heal.
Wheresoe’er the wheel goes round,
Love and happiness abound.

Hark the music how it hums!
    How the light leaps out and glances!
How the flaxen threadlet thrums,
    How the treadle dips and dances!
Wheresoe’er the wheel goes round,
Love and life and joy abound.

Foot the treadle, let the “fly”
    Gather up and fill the bobbins;
Food in plenty, by and bye,
    For ourselves and for the robins;
Will in cupboard sure be found
If the merry wheel goes round.

Bring your mind and bring your heart,
    Bring your merriest of fingers,
Play again the old-world part:
    Still in Cumberland there lingers
Memory of the life that found
Joy the while the wheels went round.

Draw the flax to glossy line,
    Keep it long and smooth and even;
Keswick spinners, spin as fine
    As the gossamer in heaven;
For true work is only found
Where the wheel with skill goes round.

Spin: odd minutes of the day
    Make your spindle bunches fuller,
Spin the weary nights away—
    Spinning ne’er made evening duller;
Therefore, let the wheel go round
And more happiness be found.

As you spin your lives are spun,
    Keswick wife or Keswick maiden:
Not a day beneath the sun
    But with knots and twists is laden;
But the wheel, God’s love, spins round,—
Makes the rough more smooth be found.

Cheerful trust your own life’s wheel
    To the hand of your All-Father;
Spin and strive each day to feel
    Life’s poor threads for good may gather
Only, if, as times go around,
Honest spinners you be found.

(English Lakes Visitor and Keswick Guardian, 25 January 1890, p. 4.)