A poacher's widow sat sighing
On the side of the white chalk bank, Where, under the gloom of fire-woods,
One spot in the lea throve rank.
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 laborer's wife.
"A laborer 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 laboring man, squire,
Both 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 rotten 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 cursèd workhouse door.