The Old Pit Shaft, Birchills

Now, the lurid sun of autumn sinks to rest
Through the gloom of smoke and fog-bank in the west.
Now the forges spurt and flare, and the furnace, big and bare,
Seem to glory in the glare upon her breast.

Here are hillocks, heaped and moulded, grey and green :
Sombre mounds with glints of water in between,
Where a ghostly basin hides and a phantom coal-boat rides,
Or in eerie silence glides across the scene.

Here the stunted scrub and brambles cluster thick
Round a low and ragged broken wall of brick ;
And within its narrow bound, where it rings the shaft around,
Lies the world of Underground - of prop and pick.

For within, the pit is gaping sheer and grey,
And the sparrows roost and chirp the ebb of day ;
And the rusted iron links swing abandoned in the chinks,
Where the sodden timber sinks and falls away.

And I dream of all the story buried there :
Of the human hopes, the triumphs, the dispair :
Of the cage that rose and fell : of the harsh, discordant bell :
Of the engine's throb and swell that shook the air :

Of the stripped and sweating miners at the face :
Of the sturdy ponies straining at the trace :
Of the roads that dip and bend : of the men who mind and mend :
Of the lights that blink and blend throughout the place :

Of the tubs that bang and clatter down the line :
Of the headstock and its wheels that whirr and whine :
Of the night air, crisp and sweet, that puts life into the feet
Where the night- and day- shifts meet above the mine :

Of the pay-day : of the market and the throng :
Of the fights that proved the weaker in the wrong :
Of the love of child and wife : of the stress and joy of life :
Of the hardships and the strife that made them strong.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Dank and heavy hangs the silence on the mound
Till a falling pebble splashes, and the sound
Stirs the sparrows, who arise in a tumult to the skies,
Like the wraith of all that lies there underground.

 Written by
Adam Sedgwick Barnard



Adam was born in 1868. He published a small volume entitled Ragged-staff Rhymes.