Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
III. AdversityA Rough Rhyme on a Rough Matter
Charles Kingsley (18191875)T
Over the crest of the hill,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping,
Under the moonlight still.
Till under their bite and their tread,
The swedes, and the wheat, and the barley
Lay cankered, and trampled, and dead.
On the side of the white chalk bank,
Where, under the gloom of fire-woods,
One spot in the lea throve rank.
Where rabbit or hare never ran,
For its black sour haulm covered over
The blood of a murdered man.
And the hares, and her husband’s blood,
And the voice of her indignation
Rose up to the throne of God:
I have wept too much in my life:
I ’ve had twenty years of pining
As an English laborer’s wife.
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 pointer’s feet;
There ’s blood on the game you sell, squire,
And there ’s blood on the game you eat.
Both body and soul to shame,
To pay for your seat in the House, squire,
And to pay for the feed of your game.
When you ’d give neither work nor meat,
And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden
At our starving children’s feet;
Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay;
While the rain pattered in on the rotten bride-bed,
And the walls let in the day;
On the mud of the cold clay floor,
Till you parted us all for three months, squire,
At the cursèd workhouse door.
What self-respect could we keep,
Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers,
Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep?
Have wandered away in their shame;
If your misses had slept, squire, where they did,
Your misses might do the same.
With handfuls of coals and rice,
Or by dealing out flannel and sheeting
A little below cost price?
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 dark and dreary day,
When scrofula, gout, and madness
Are eating your race away;
You have cast your daughters’ bread,
And, worn out with liquor and harlots,
Your heir at your feet lies dead;
Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave,
You will find in your God the protector
Of the freeman you fancied your slave.”
And wept till her heart grew light;
And at last, when her passion was over,
Went wandering into the night.
Over the uplands still,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping
On the side of the white chalk hill.