The Worked-Out Mine

On summer nights when moonbeams flowAnd glisten o'er the high, white tips,And winds make lamentation low,As through the ribs of shattered ships,And steal about the broken braceWhere pendant timbers swing and moan,And flitting bats give aimless chase,Who dares to seek the mine alone?

The shrinking bush with sable rimsA skeleton forlorn and bowed,With pipe-clay white about its limbsAnd at its feet a tattered shroud;And ghostly figures lurk and groan,Shrill whispers sound from ghostly lips,And ghostly footsteps start the stoneThat clatters sharply down the tips.

The engine-house is dark and still,The life that raged within has fled;Like open graves the boilers chillThat once with glowing fires were red;Above the shaft in measured spaceA rotted rope swings to and fro,Whilst o'er the plat and on the braceThe silent shadows come and go.

And there below, in chambers dreadWhere 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 sighsAre flung with moans and muttered fears,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,The groans of Panton, Praer and Young,And 'Trucker Bill' of Number Five,Along the ruined workings roll;For deep in every shoot and driveThis mine secretes a shackled soul.

Ah! woeful 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,Is homage done in wild device;Men hate you as the sepulchreThat stores their bloody sacrifice.