Where never the dancing sunbeams play, where never the sunbeams sleep,
We win the ore from the stubborn rock by the candle's flickering light,
Down. down, a hundred fathoms deep, where the day is as the night. On either hand the precious ore which mortals madly crave.
Is shining as it shone of yore in famed Aladdin's cave
Potent to save and so to bless, more potent still to damn--
This dross to which no living thing bows down except proud man. Year in, year out, with hammer and drill we miners ply our craft.
'Midst poisonous fumes of dynamite, in winze, in level, in shaft.
And oft 'tis, 'O, for a breath of air ! of fresh air pure and free,
As it blows a hundred fathoms above from a thousand leagues of sea. When the timbers crash around us and the level's caving in,
And the shrieks of mangled miners pierce high above the din,
O, 'tis then that pluck is needed a comrade crush'd to save,
A hundred fathoms deep is then no place but for the brave. We risk our lives for glittering gold where never the sunbeams creep
For glittering gold the mariner ploughs through the stormy deep.
The soldier at the cannon's mouth, the Arctic sailor bold,
From cradle to the cypress'd tomb all risk their lives for gold. --John Richards. Notes
From the Sydney Newspaper The Newsletter: an Australian Paper for Australian People 6 Oct 1900 p. 14.
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