Another poem from Broadcast, by Ernest Howard Crosby (1905). It follows “God’s Gift,” which appears below.

The Land of the Noonday Night

A MINER’S SONG.

WE have eyes to see like yours Way down in the deep, deep mine, But there’s nothing to mark but the dreadful dark

Where the sun can never shine. On the banks of clammy coal

Our lamps cast a flickering light At the bottom drear of the moist black hole In the land of the noonday night.

We have children at home like yours,

But at eve when we homeward tread We find them asleep in a tangled heap,

Three or four in a single bed. In the morning our tasks begin Before the sun shines bright, For we have no sun and we have no kin In the land of the noonday night.

But our home is not like yours.

‘Tis a bare, unpainted shack, Where the raindrops pour on the shaky floor,

And the coal-dust stains it black. Not a flower or blade of grass

Can escape the grimy blight, For the face of our yard is seared and scarred

In the land of the noonday night.

**But the men who own the mines, And who live like kings of old—Ah! little they care how their wage-slaves fare,

So long as they get their gold!** And the fire-damp may explode

And a thousand die outright, For the men come cheap who go down deep

In the land of the noonday night.

And like feathers they weigh the coal

When they pay us by the head, But for you who buy it twice too high They weigh it like chunks of lead. And our wage goes back in rent— For they have us in such a plight— And they squeeze us sore at the company’s store

In the land of the noonday night.

And we labour with straining arms

For the pittance they deign to give, And our boys must quit the school for the pit To drudge that we all may live. And our teeth feel the grit of the mine In the very bread we bite, Till our inmost soul is denied with coal In the land of the noonday night.

And if in the end we dare

To assert our just demands, Then their courts emit an injunction writ To shackle our tongues and hands. And if in spite of their frown We protest that we will unite, Then they lock us up or they shoot us down

In the land of the noonday night.

**Who was it that made the coal?

Our God as well as theirs! If He gave it free to you and me, Then keep us out who dares! Let the people own their mines—** Bitumen and anthracite— And the right prevail under hill and dale In the land of the noonday night.