There was a whispering in my hearth, <br />A sigh of the coal. <br />Grown wistful of a former earth <br />It might recall. <br /> <br />I listened for a tale of leaves <br />And smothered ferns, <br />Frond-forests; and the low, sly lives <br />Before the fawns. <br /> <br />My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer <br />From Time's old cauldron, <br />Before the birds made nests in summer, <br />Or men had children. <br /> <br />But the coals were murmuring of their mine, <br />And moans down there <br />Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men <br />Writhing for air. <br /> <br />And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard, <br />Bones without number. <br />For many hearts with coal are charred, <br />And few remember. <br /> <br />I thought of all that worked dark pits <br />Of war, and died <br />Digging the rock where Death reputes <br />Peace lies indeed. <br /> <br />Comforted years will sit soft-chaired <br />In rooms of amber; <br />The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered <br />By our lifes' ember. <br /> <br />The centuries will burn rich loads <br />With which we groaned, <br />Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids, <br />While songs are crooned. <br />But they will not dream of us poor lads <br />Left in the ground.<br /><br />Wilfred Owen<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/miners/
