There’s another and brighter song to sing
That is caught on the writer’s quill,
Though ’tis told all day with a rhythmic swing
By the stamps of the ten-head mill:
They repeat no burden of cankered greed,
And they echo no anguished moan,
When they rattle the roofs
With their iron hoofs,
As they pound on your two-ounce stone!
There’s never a beat for the filching crew,
Not a chip from the workman’s crust;
There’s never a turn for the London Jew,
Nor a “weight” for the London “trust”;
There’s never a sigh for the wretched gnomes
Below in the seething stope,
And the walls resound,
As the cams go round,
With the clamour of new-born Hope!
There’s a battler seeing the parcel through;
And he stands in the lamplight dim,
And he bends his ear to the voice anew
For the message that comes to him:
And his bronzed cheek glows as the words grow clear.
For they quicken his pulse and thrill,
And memories stir
To the whizz and whir
Of the wheels of the ten-head mill.
There’s a king to-night in his dungarees,
And he’s quaffing an old, old wine—
Oh, he doffs no cap and he bends no knees
To the boss of the Bull-owned mine!
And he gives no thought to the fruitless quest
Where his years and his toil were cast,
While the stampers sing
The awakening
Of his Luck—that has come at last!
So the sky grows clear and the world grows wide,
And there’s melody in the air:
There’s a waiting ship for the Eastern side,
And a woman that’s waiting there:
There’s a proud disdain for the things that were,
And this planet is all his own—
And there’s good red blood
In the stamper’s thud
As it pounds on his two-ounce stone!