By Miners Hands

(Winner of the Kernewek Lowender Poetry Competition)

What miner’s art

Did meld and make,

Did stone on stone

Fling you on high,

Or lie beneath

The stars, awake

To think your shape

As nights sped by?

 

What weary hand

Did knead and tread

Your mud in some

Dead winter’s storm,

While autumn’s bride

Long kept her bed

To wait his will

Who gave you form.

 

And though they lie

Unknown at last,

Without foundation

Still you stand,

Your walls have stood

Six score of years

While they ran through

Their shift of sand!

 

And every furrow

At some brow

Did trace in mud

These barren lands,

Each humble cottage

Built in need

Was raised in pride

By miner’s hands!

 

David Lewis Paget