"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?
"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
A little below cost price?
"You may tire of the jail and the workhouse,
And take to allotments and schools, But you 've run up a debt that will never
Be repaid us by penny-club rules.
"In the season of shame and sadness,
In the dark and dreary day. When scrofula, gout, and madness
Are eating your race away;
"When to kennels and liveried varlets
You have cast your daughters' bread, And, worn out with liquor and harlots,
Your heir at your feet lies dead;
"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 slave."
She looked at the tuft of clover,
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
Over the uplands still, Where the clover and corn lay sleeping
On the side of the white chalk hill.
CHARLES KINGSLEY.