A NATION'S DEBT
by Frank Seddon
 
It's people now have gone away
From the village on the hill.
It stands, the ghost town of today;
For the mine is shut and still.
Now like a gravestone for the town
Stand smokeless chimneys tall.
The ropes that once let miners down
Hang rusting on the wall.
Those headgear wheels that turn no more,
The wind blows through them, shrill,
A moaning coning from a door
That's slowly swinging still.
Only ghosts dwell in the town
To ramble on the hill.
Where miners homes are falling down-
Now there's no more men to kill.
Now they've changed the miner's ways
And thrown away his skill
That served us in those bygone days,
When we'd all those ships to fill
But as we watch those homes decay,
In that ghost town on the hill.
There must be something more to say
Before we close the till.
 
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