Charlotte Wilson Archive
Written: 1887.
Source: Text from RevoltLib.com.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Stretch'd a score of straggling hovels scatter'd down the mountain
side,
Throng'd the tenants at each threshold famine-stricken, terror-eyed;
Age in every shape of suffering, feebleness, decrepitude--
Manhood fire-eyed, husky-throated,--tear-brimm'd, wan-faced woman-
hood,
Youth wild-wondering, expectant, awestruck in an unknown dread,--
Infancy, eye wonder lacking in the sharper lack of bread;
All a hamlet watching, waiting; terror-stricken, dazed, aghast;
Such a night upon the moor-side, roofless in the winter-blast!
All the straggling, scattered hamlet waiting, watching through the
snow,
For the crowning act of "justice,"-for--Rent's lawful murder-blow!
Scatter'd, huddled by the moorside, all a hamlet's chattels, cast,
Thrust from hovel, hut and cabin, to the snow-drift and the waste
Crouch'd around each little home-wreck, round each squalid household
heap,
Age and infancy and sickness in as squalid clusters creep;
While a score of clanking troopers, while a score of arm'd police,
Guard "emergencies" commiss'd in the name of law and peace,
By a Christian queen's strict warrant, 'neath a Christian government,
To unhouse, unroof a village in the sacred name of Rent!