The Bad Squire

The merry brown hares came a-leaping
Over the crest of the hill
Where the clover and corn lay a-sleeping
Under the moonlight so still
Leaping so late and so early
'Till under their bite and their tread
The swedes and the wheat and the barley
Lay cankered and trampled and dead

A poacher's poor widow sat sighing
On the side of the moss-patterned bank
Where under the gloom of the fir-woods
One acre of ground laying rank
She watched over barely grown clover
Where rabbit or hare never ran
For the ground that it all covered over
Hid the blood of a good murdered man

She thought of the shaded plantation
And the hares and her husband's own blood
And the voice of her own indignation
Rose up to the throne of her God
There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, Squire
There's blood on your pointer's cold feet
There's blood on the game that you sell Squire
And there's blood on the game that you eat

You have sold out the labouring man, Squire
Both body and soul for 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 not the work nor the meat
And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden
At our starving poor little one's feet

When packed into one tiny chamber
Man, mother and little ones lay
While the rain pattered in on our bride bed
And the walls barely held out the day
When we lay in the heat of the fever
On the mud and the clay of the floor
'Till you parted us all for three months, Squire
And we knocked at the working house door

So to kennels and liveried varlets
Where you starved your own daughter of bread
And worn out with liquor and harlots
See your heirs at your feet lying dead
When you follow them into your heaven
And your soul rots asleep in the grave
Then Squire, you will not be forgiven
By the free men you took as your slaves