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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365948" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Guardian of the Pit</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">He'd worked at the pit since he was ten, <br>Was quite at home in the dark, <br>Worked by the light of a miner's lamp<br>Avoided the slightest spark, <br>He chipped away at the face of coal, <br>He chewed tobacco, and spat, <br>His face was black as he wandered home<br>With pride in his miner's hat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the mine had closed as it petered out<br>And the miners went on the dole, <br>While Jack Coltrane had fretted at home<br>For his work was his very soul, <br>The entrance tunnels were sealed up tight<br>And the Colliery wheel was stopped, <br>It sat like an aging dinosaur<br>Set high on its wooden props.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The miners drifted away for work<br>The walls of the houses cracked, <br>The doors and windows were boarded up<br>The only one left was Jack, <br>He wandered lonely about the streets<br>Of the place he had always known, <br>The empty terraces, vacant shops<br>In the town that he'd called his home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I'd gone to squat in an empty house<br>I was down on my luck back then, <br>And Jack had knocked on my nailed up door, <br>I told him my name was Ben, <br>He'd pop around for a morning tea<br>And he'd tell me tales of the mine, <br>His eyes would gleam with excitement when<br>He talked of the dust and grime.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘I'll take you there, and show you the pit.'<br>He knew I'd never been down, <br>‘What else is to do in a place like this, '<br>He said, and I must have frowned.<br>‘There's nothing to worry about, old son, <br>Just wrap up well for the cold, <br>It used to be hot in the workings then, <br>But we'll be looking for gold.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He said he knew where the traces were, <br>He'd seen it a thousand times, <br>‘The owners only wanted the coal<br>So we left the rest behind, <br>There's not a lot, but enough for us, <br>We'll chip out a tidy sum.'<br>That's all I needed to know, I went<br>And put some old denims on.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The mine was scary for one like me<br>Who'd never been down a pit, <br>So dark and damp, and the air was still, <br>I hated the smell of it, <br>We need to go down 300 feet<br>He said, not batting an eye, <br>I trudged along in his wake, and thinking: <br>‘Why did I come - Oh why? '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We saw the first few traces of gold<br>At the thirty fathom mark, <br>But Jack said, ‘Still there's a way to go, '<br>And he trudged along in the dark, <br>We walked around the falls from the roof<br>Where the props had given way, <br>It was far too late to be turning back<br>Though I felt a mute dismay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Suddenly there was a gleam ahead<br>Lit up by our feeble lamps, <br>And Jack had hurried ahead to check<br>What gleamed in the rising damp, <br>Behind a fall I could see a sight<br>That will haunt me ‘til I'm old, <br>A skeleton lay in the passageway, <br>A skeleton covered in gold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘He must have been here a hundred years, '<br>Said Jack, ‘and there is the proof, <br>The fall has only revealed him now<br>The gold has leached from the roof, <br>It's covered this poor old-timer's bones<br>He's worth more now that he's dead, '<br>But then the end of the tunnel glowed<br>And a voice boomed in my head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘Who desecrates my dominions, <br>Who approaches me in their pride? <br>You come to my underground kingdom<br>Where another before you died! '<br>The voice came up through a hole in the ground<br>That glowed like a fire was lit, <br>‘Retreat, or I'll tear you asunder, <br>I'm the Guardian of the Pit! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I don't know how we got out that day<br>We stumbled and ran to hide, <br>We thought the demon was at our heels<br>As we caught at our breath, and cried, <br>We fell out into the open air<br>And breathed again at the last, <br>I said, ‘I'll never go down again! '<br>Jack said, ‘It must have been gas! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘It must have been just a pocket of gas<br>That we breathed, that knocked us out, <br>It was just a hallucination<br>That's for sure, ' said Jack, ‘No doubt! '<br>But he never went down the mine again, <br>He said he was 'over it', <br>But truth to tell, he was scared as hell<br>Of the Guardian of the Pit! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">21 October 2012</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=David+Lewis+Paget">David Lewis Paget</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365948" data-title="The Guardian of the Pit de David Lewis Paget" data-description="He'd worked at the pit since he was ten, 
Was quite at home in the dark, 
Worked by the light of a miner's lamp
Avoided the slightest spark, 
He chipped away at the face of coal, 
He chewed tobacco, and spat, 
His face was black as he wandered hom..."></div>
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