A Miner's Song (1906)
We have eyes to see like yoursWay down in the deep, deep mine,
But there's nothing to mark but the dreadful dark
Where the sun can never shine.
On the banks of clammy coal
Our lamps cast a flickering light
At the bottom drear of the moist black hole
In the land of the noonday night. We have children at home like yours,
But at eve when we homeward tread
We find them asleep in a tangled heap,
Three or four in a single bed.
In the morning our tasks begin
Before the sun shines bright,
For we have no sun and we have no kin
In the land of noonday night. But our home is not like yours.
'Tis a bare, unpainted shack,
Where the rain drops pour on the shaky floor.
And the coal-dust stains it black.
Not a flower or blade of grass
Can escape the grimy blight,
For the face of our yard is seared and scarred
In the land of the noonday night. But the men who own the mines,
And who live like kings of old-
Ah ! little they care how their wage slaves fare,
So long as they get their gold !
And the fire-damp may explode
And a thousand die outright,
For the men come cheap who go down deep
In the land of the noonday night. And like feathers they weigh the coal
When they pay us by the head.
But for you who buy it twice too high
They weigh it like chunks of lead.
And our wage goes back in rent-
For they have us in such a plight-
And they squeeze us sore at the company's store
In the land of the noonday tide. And we labor with straining arms
For the pittance they deign to give.
And our boys must quit the school for the pit
To drudge that we all may live.
And our teeth feel the grit of the mine
In the very bread we bite.
Till our inmost soul is defiled with coal
In the land of the noonday night. And if in the end we dare
To assert our just demands.
Then their courts emit an injunction writ
To shackle our tongues and hands.
And in spite of their frown
We protest that we will unite,
Then they lock us up or they shoot us down
In the land of the noonday night. Who was it that made the coal ?
Our God as well as theirs ;
If he gave it free to you and me,
Then keep us out who dares !
Let the people own their mines-
Bitumen and anthracite-
And the right prevail under hill and dale
In the land of the noonday night. ERNEST CROSBY Rhinebeck. N.Y Notes From the Western Australian Newspaper The Westralian Worker 18 May 1906 p. 7. Australian borrowings from American and British Industrial Song was not uncommon, and this song is a good example.