Many many years ago the news ripped through the London Workhouses,
Through all Bethnel-green, Spitalfields and through the Minories,
Along Tower-hill and up to Shoreditch and Clerkenwell,
To the very purlieus of the Seven Dials, and across the water in Southwark,
Important news spread from ear to ear, overheard in chop houses, and cabs,
Blackberries are ripe, and there are mushrooms in the forest turf.
Like an electric thrill, it has darted far and wide, high and low,
In the great workshops, whether sweating over a hot iron, or folding,
Steaming dye-houses and hatteries or darting the shuttle amongst silken threads,
The bread moulders, or makers of coffins for the dead, or their nails,
To the farmers, the boys that roam the streets, and the hags in alleys,
Everywhere there is just one thought, the blackberries are ripe.
Winter and the Poor
Rising from his bed, he scraped the frost on the inside of a window,
The village was covered in deep snow, drifting up hedges and walls,
Walking from the bedroom he shivered, a draught came through the eaves,
His freezing hands snapped twigs and thin wood for a fire, to keep warm.
Snow brought misery to the peasants in their hovelled, white villages,
Nobody could work as most worked on the land, in the fields or roads,
No work no pay was the way things are for the urchins and the poor,
Drifts and freezing winds chilled their bones, extra rags put on.
In bitter winter we must open ours hearts with sympathy for the poor,
Providence, kindness, caring, tempers the the wind to the shorn lambs,
The shepherd wanders out with stick, to help sheep in hollows of hills,
Prodding in the drifts looking for lost sheep, while snow burns his hands.
It is now the iron depth of winter, harsh unforgiving weather, bitterly cold,
The old dare not venture out, as a slip might break there brittle old bones,
The sick are wrapped up, inches from a tiny fire, rubbing and blowing into hands
As the wind finds its way in under doors, cracked windows, and threadbare roofs.