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