There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal.
Grown wistful of a former
It might recall.
I listened for a tale of
And smothered ferns,
Frond-forests; and the low, sly
Before the fawns.
My fire might show steam-phantoms
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
Of boys that slept wry sleep, and
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
Of war, and
Digging the rock where Death
Peace lies indeed.
Comforted years will sit
In rooms of amber;
The years will stretch their hands,
By our lifes' ember.
The centuries will burn rich
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned.
But they will not dream of us poor
Left in the ground.
