She watched a long tuft of clover,
Where rabbit or hare never ran;
For its black sour haulm covered over
The blood of a murdered man.
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—
I have wept too much in my life:
I’ve had twenty years of pining
As an English labourer’s wife.
‘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 your pointer’s feet;
There’s blood on the game you sell, squire,
And there’s blood on the game you eat.
‘You have sold the labouring-man, squire,
Body and soul to shame,
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 dreary workhouse door.
‘We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders?
What self-respect could we keep,
Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers,
Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep?