She thought of the dark plantation, And the hares, and her husband's blood, And the voice of her indignation Rose up to the throne of God. "I am long past wailing and whining— A labourer in Christian England, Where they cant of a Saviour's name, And yet waste men's lives like the vermin's For a few more brace of game. There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire, There's blood on the game you sell, squire, You have sold the labouring-man, squire, To pay for your seat in the House, squire, And to pay for the feed of your game. You made him a poacher yourself, squire, When you'd give neither work nor meat, And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden. At our starving children's feet; When packed in one reeking chamber, Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay; While the rain pattered in on the rotting bride-bed, And the walls let in the day; When we lay in the burning fever On the mud of the cold clay floor, Till you parted us all for three months, squire, At the cursed workhouse-door. We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders? Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers, Our daughters with base-born babies Have wandered away in their shame; If your misses had slept, squire, where they did, Your misses might do the same. Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking With handfuls of coals and rice, Or by dealing out flannel and sheeting You may tire of the jail and the workhouse, But you I've run up a debt that will never In the season of shame and sadness, When to kennels and liveried varlets When your youngest, the mealy-mouthed rector, Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave, You will find in your God the protector Of the freeman you fancied your She looked at the tuft of clover, slave." And wept till her heart grew light; And at last when her passion was over, Went wandering into the night. But the merry brown hares came leaping Where the clover and corn lay sleeping On the side of the white chalk hill. PEOPLE'S SONG, 1849. I. Weep, weep, weep and weep, For pauper, dolt, and slave! Hark from wasted moor and fen, Feverous alley, workhouse den, Swells the wail of Saxon men— Work! or the grave! II. Down, down, down and down Why for sluggards cark and moil? He that will not live by toil Has no right on English soil! III. Up, up, up and up! Face your game and play it! THE DAY OF THE LORD. THE Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand! A nation sleeps starving on heaps of gold; The night is darkest before the dawn— Gather you, gather you, angels of God- Come! for the Earth is grown coward and old- Wisdom, Self-sacrifice, Daring, and Love, Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell- Gather, and fall in the snare! Hirelings and Mammonites, Pedants and Knaves, Crawl to the battle-field-sneak to your graves, In the Day of the Lord at hand. |