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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



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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.
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