The Bad Squire Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD AEFE GHGH IJIK ALAL MNFN OPOP ONON OPIP GQDQ GROR FSFS FNTN AFAF FFGF FQFQ FDFD GUG GVGV ABAB B WThe merry brown hares came leaping | A |
Over the crest of the hill | B |
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping | A |
Under the moonlight still | B |
- | |
Leaping late and early | C |
Till under their bite and their tread | D |
The swedes and the wheat and the barley | C |
Lay cankered and trampled and dead | D |
- | |
A poacher's widow sat sighing | A |
On the side of the white chalk bank | E |
Where under the gloomy fir woods | F |
One spot in the ley throve rank | E |
- | |
She watched a long tuft of clover | G |
Where rabbit or hare never ran | H |
For its black sour haulm covered over | G |
The blood of a murdered man | H |
- | |
She thought of the dark plantation | I |
And the hares and her husband's blood | J |
And the voice of her indignation | I |
Rose up to the throne of God | K |
- | |
'I am long past wailing and whining | A |
I have wept too much in my life | L |
I've had twenty years of pining | A |
As an English labourer's wife | L |
- | |
'A labourer in Christian England | M |
Where they cant of a Saviour's name | N |
And yet waste men's lives like the vermin's | F |
For a few more brace of game | N |
- | |
'There's blood on your new foreign shrubs squire | O |
There's blood on your pointer's feet | P |
There's blood on the game you sell squire | O |
And there's blood on the game you eat | P |
- | |
'You have sold the labouring man squire | O |
Body and soul to shame | N |
To pay for your seat in the House squire | O |
And to pay for the feed of your game | N |
- | |
'You made him a poacher yourself squire | O |
When you'd give neither work nor meat | P |
And your barley fed hares robbed the garden | I |
At our starving children's feet | P |
- | |
'When packed in one reeking chamber | G |
Man maid mother and little ones lay | Q |
While the rain pattered in on the rotting bride bed | D |
And the walls let in the day | Q |
- | |
'When we lay in the burning fever | G |
On the mud of the cold clay floor | R |
Till you parted us all for three months squire | O |
At the dreary workhouse door | R |
- | |
'We quarrelled like brutes and who wonders | F |
What self respect could we keep | S |
Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers | F |
Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep | S |
- | |
'Our daughters with base born babies | F |
Have wandered away in their shame | N |
If your misses had slept squire where they did | T |
Your misses might do the same | N |
- | |
'Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking | A |
With handfuls of coals and rice | F |
Or by dealing out flannel and sheeting | A |
A little below cost price | F |
- | |
'You may tire of the jail and the workhouse | F |
And take to allotments and schools | F |
But you've run up a debt that will never | G |
Be paid us by penny club rules | F |
- | |
'In the season of shame and sadness | F |
In the dark and dreary day | Q |
When scrofula gout and madness | F |
Are eating your race away | Q |
- | |
'When to kennels and liveried varlets | F |
You have cast your daughter's bread | D |
And worn out with liquor and harlots | F |
Your heir at your feet lies dead | D |
- | |
'When your youngest the mealy mouthed rector | G |
Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave | U |
You will find in your God the protector | G |
Of the freeman you fancied your slave ' | - |
- | |
She looked at the tuft of clover | G |
And wept till her heart grew light | V |
And at last when her passion was over | G |
Went wandering into the night | V |
- | |
But the merry brown hares came leaping | A |
Over the uplands still | B |
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping | A |
On the side of the white chalk hill | B |
- | |
- | |
Eversley | B |
- | |
From Yeast | W |
Charles Kingsley
(1)
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