Miners

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.