Rhymes from the Mines

He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly,

  And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft,

With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly

  And he bears all over the brands of graft;

And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder

  Why by night and day now the whim is still,

Why the silence is, and the stampers' thunder

  Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill.

In that whim he worked when the night winds bellowed

  On the riven summit of Giant's Hand,

And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed

  All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land;

And he knew his shift, and the whistle's warning,

  And he knew the calls of the boys below;

Through the years, unbidden, at night or morning,

 He had taken his stand by the old whim bow.

But the whim stands still, and the wheeling swallow

  In the silent shaft hangs her home of clay,

And the lizards flirt and the swift snakes follow

  O'er the grass-grown brace in the summer day;

And the corn springs high in the cracks and corners

  Of the forge, and down where the timber lies;

And the crows are perched like a band of mourners

  On the broken hut on the Hermit's Rise.

All the hands have gone, for the rich reef paid out,

  And the company waits till the calls come in;

But the old grey horse, like the claim, is played out,

  And no market's near for his bones and skin.

So they let him live, and they left him grazing

  By the creek, and oft in the evening dim

I have seen him stand on the rises, gazing

  At the ruined brace and the rotting whim.

The floods rush high in the gully under,

  And the lightnings lash at the shrinking trees,

Or the cattle down from the ranges blunder

  As the fires drive by on the summer breeze.

Still the feeble horse at the right hour wanders

  To the lonely ring, though the whistle's dumb,

And with hanging head by the bow he ponders

  Where the whim boy's gone-why the shifts don't come.

But there comes a night when he sees lights glowing

  In the roofless huts and the ravaged mill,

When he hears again all the stampers going-

  Though the huts are dark and the stampers still:

When he sees the steam to the black roof clinging

  As its shadows roll on the silver sands,

And he knows the voice of his driver singing,

  And the knocker's clang where the braceman stands.