Miners

There was a whispering in my hearth,

A sigh of the coal.

Grown wistful of a former earth

It might recall.

I listened for a tale of leaves

And smothered ferns,

Frond-forests; and the low, sly lives

Before the fawns.

My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer

From Time's old cauldron,

Before the birds made nests in summer,

Or men had children.

But the coals were murmuring of their mine,

And moans down there

Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men

Writhing for air.

And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,

Bones without number.

For many hearts with coal are charred,

And few remember.

I thought of all that worked dark pits

Of war, and died

Digging the rock where Death reputes

Peace lies indeed.

Comforted years will sit soft-chaired

In rooms of amber;

The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered

By our lifes' ember.

The centuries will burn rich loads

With which we groaned,

Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,

While songs are crooned.

But they will not dream of us poor lads

Left in the ground.