| |
| ON summer nights when moonbeams flow | |
| And glisten o’er the high, white tips, | |
| And winds make lamentation low, | |
| As through the ribs of shattered ships, | |
| And steal about the broken brace | 5 |
| Where pendant timbers swing and moan, | |
| And flitting bats give aimless chase, | |
| Who dares to seek the mine alone? | |
| |
| The shrinking bush with sable rims | |
| A skeleton forlorn and bowed, | 10 |
| With pipe-clay white about its limbs | |
| And at its feet a tattered shroud; | |
| And ghostly figures lurk and groan, | |
| Shrill whispers sound from ghostly lips, | |
| And ghostly footsteps start the stone | 15 |
| That clatters sharply down the tips. | |
| |
| The engine-house is dark and still, | |
| The life that raged within has fled; | |
| Like open graves the boilers chill | |
| That once with glowing fires were red; | 20 |
| Above the shaft in measured space | |
| A rotted rope swings to and fro, | |
| Whilst o’er the plat and on the brace | |
| The silent shadows come and go. | |
| |
| And there below, in chambers dread | 25 |
| Where darkness like a fungus clings, | |
| Are lingering still the old mine’s dead— | |
| Bend o’er and hear their whisperings! | |
| Up from the blackness sobs and sighs | |
| Are flung with moans and muttered fears, | 30 |
| A low lament that never dies, | |
| And ceaseless sound of falling tears. | |
| |
| My ears intent have heard their grief— | |
| The fitful tones of Carter’s tongue, | |
| The strong man crushed beneath the reef, | 35 |
| The groans of Panton, Praer, and Young, | |
| And ‘Trucker Bill’ of Number Five, | |
| Along the ruined workings roll; | |
| For deep in every shoot and drive | |
| This mine secretes a shackled soul. | 40 |
| |
| Ah! woful mine, where wives have wept, | |
| And mothers prayed in anxious pain, | |
| And long, distracting vigil kept, | |
| You yawn for victims now in vain! | |
| Still to that god, whose shrine you were, | 45 |
| Is homage done in wild device; | |
| Men hate you as the sepulchre | |
| That stores their bloody sacrifice. | |
| |
