[Editor: A poem about miners who risked their lives to save their fellow miners. Published in The Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA), 16 October 1898.]
Heroes of the Underground.
How he did it? Same old story,
Writ in blood-gouts grim and large,
Of a treacherous fuse slow burning,
Close upon a slumbering charge.
Loud ye laud the slaughtering soldier
As he bounds into the breach:
Know ye that the simple miner
Has lessons nobler far to teach.
Yet how oft the greater Hero
Falls life’s rugged rocks among,
And fills a grave by none remembered,
Unwept, unhonored and unsung.
No skirling pipe’s soul-piercing pibroch
Nerves him onward to the fight —
There’s death to dare; he simply does it,
Nor swerves a hair to left or right.
No lofty minstrel strikes his lyre
To themes that should a nation thrill,
Nor fuses with celestial fire
The Hero’s deeds of mine and mill.
Source:
The Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA), 16 October 1898, p. 2
Also published in:
The Coolgardie Miner (Coolgardie, WA), 18 August 1938, p. 7
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