Death In a Coal Mine - Child Miners

Into the bowels of the earth we descend Down into the pit of hell Crawling on hands and knees to mine This precious fuel they call coal Now Petey and I we are almost men He is ten and I'm eleven Been working here, down this mine These last two years and month now Mum is counting on us as men Since Dad died from consumption Coughed every night, spat out blood Now gone to be with Jesus The work is hard, it's hot down here To work by flickering candlelight The dust so thick, you always taste it It makes you cough and splutter We've almost reached the coal face When I can hear some rumbling I turned my head to speak to Petey When the world collapsed around me I don't know how long I lay there When sense returned to me By the flickering light I could see The roof caved in behind me Now I don't know if Petey was safe Or if Petey was buried under But what I knew and the news was bad This was a miner's worst nightmare Not a breeze came through, no fresh air The tunnel tightly sealed I think I knew deep in my heart My bones would find rest here Time passed, don't know how long The candle burned away The last light my eyes did see Then blackness all around I had seen night and I'd seen black But never before black like this The silence too was deafening A tear squeezed from my eye I cannot cry, I am a man But the tears slid down my cheeks I told myself for Mum I cried What will become of her The air so stale, tis hard to breathe My eyelids heavy, drooping Slowly I drift off to sleep Tomorrow I'll awake in heaven ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ About this poem: Sadly children as young as five were sent down into the mines and should there be a cave in it was more economical to leave them there and keep mining in a different direction. Thousands of children perished working in mines. .