The Mutiny of the Chains
PENAL COLONY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA, 1857
THE sun rose o'er dark Fremantle,
And the Sentry stood on the wall;
Above him, with white lines swinging,
The flag-staff, bare and tall:
The flag at its foot—the Mutiny Flag—
Was always fast to the line,—
For its sanguine field was a cry of fear,
And the Colony counted an hour a year
In the need of the blood-red sign.
The staff and the line, with its ruddy flash,
lake a threat or an evil-bode,
Were a monstrous whip with a crimson lash,
Fit sign for the penal code.
The Sentry leant on his rifle, and stood
By the mast, with a deep-drawn breath;
A stern-browed man, but there heaved a sigh
For the sight that greeted his downward eye
In the prison-square beneath.
In yellow garb, in soldier lines,
One hundred men in chains;
While the watchful warders, sword in hand,
With eyes suspicious keenly scanned
The links of the living lanes.
There, wary eyes met stony eyes,
And stony face met stone.
There was never a gleam of trust or truce;
In the covert thought of an iron loose,
Grim warder and ward were one.
Why was it so, that there they stood,—
Stern driver and branded slave?
Why rusted the gyve in the bondman's blood,
No hope for him but the grave?
Out of thousands there why was it so
That one hundred hearts must feel
The bitterest pang of the penal woe,
And the grind of a nation's heel?
Why, but for choice—the bondman's choice?
They balanced the gains and pains;.
They took their chance of the chains.
There spake in their hearts a hidden voice
Of the blinding joy of a freeman's burst
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
Added by Poetry Lover
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