On summer nights when moonbeams pour 
   And glisten o’er the high, white tips, 
And soft winds make a woeful roar  
   Like gales through the ribs of shattered ships, 
And steal about the broken brace 
   Where pendant timbers swing and moan, 
And flitting bats give aimless chase, 
   Who dares to seek the mine alone? 


The shrinking bush win sable rims 
   A skeleton forlorn and bowed, 
With pipe-clay white about its limbs 
   And at its feet - a tattered shroud; 
And ghostly figures lurk and groan, 
   Shrill whispers sound from ghostly lips, 
And ghostly footsteps start the stone 
   That clatters sharply down the tips. 


The engine-house now darkly looms, 
   The life that raged within has fled; 
The boilers grimly gape, like tombs, 
   Once fierce with fire and glowing red; 
Above the shaft, in measured space, 
   A rotted rope swings to and fro, 
Whilst o’er the plat and on the brace 
   The silent shadows come and go. 


And there below, in chambers dread 
   Where darkness like a fungus clings, 
Are lingering still the old mine’s dead -  
   Bend o’er and hear their whisperings! 
Up from the blackness sobs and sighs 
   Are flung with moans and muttered fears, 
A low lament that never dies, 
   And ceaseless sound of falling tears. 


My ears intent have heard their grief -  
   The fitful tones of Carter’s tongue, 
The strong man crushed beneath the reef, 
   The groans of Panton, Praer, and Young, 
And "Trucker Bill" of Number 5, 
   In faint, far murmurs weirdly troll; 
For deep in every shoot and drive 
   This mine secretes a shackled soul. 


Ah! woeful mine, where wives have wept, 
   And mothers prayed in anxious pain, 
And long, distracting vigil kept, 
   You yawn for victims now in vain! 
Still to that god, whose shrine you were, 
   Is homage done in wild device; 
Men hate you as the sepulchre 
   That stores their bloody sacrifice.

"Edward Dyson"
The Bulletin, 21 December 1889, p22

Note:
This poem was published in slightly different form in Dyson's poetry collection Rhymes From the Mines and Other Lines.