MINERS
by: Wilfred Owen
- HERE 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.
-
- 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 life's 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
- Lost in the ground.
'Miners' is reprinted from An
Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London: Methuen
& Co., 1921. |
MORE POEMS BY WILFRED OWEN
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