There was once a familiar scene above the roof tops <br />where smoke ascended. With the darkness of the skyline and <br />the dense November fog, a day not passing by without being <br />sick or tormented. Chimney sweeps and many of them boys and <br />boys that never knew how to play with games and toys. <br />Up the Chimney with a brush in hand, banishing the soot that <br />choked the land. None schooling lads with no knowledge of books <br />with soot covered faces just neglecting their looks. <br />'A job for a lad with a strong back, sixpence a day to clear soot from the stack! <br />A boyhood dream to earn a bob a two, a paid adventure to climb up <br />the flue, and the thinner the child he became first in the queue. <br />A low paid job but that's not all, their growth was stunted and some <br />never grew at all. Legs with rickets and ever fading eye sight <br />and a lad without daylight lives a long lonesome night. <br />If a boy could work he was put to the test, with a slump in the <br />summer he was grateful of the rest. He had no time to watch <br />the flowers grow and he knew nothing of the seasons with their <br />rain and snow. <br />A small wooden coffin was so often placed in a grave, and in it <br />a lad who went for a job and became a slave.<br /><br />sylvia spencer<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-job-for-a-lad/
