From William Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Sonnets

 

DEPLORABLE his lot who tills the ground,

His whole life long tills it, with heartless toil

Of villain-service, passing with the soil

To each new Master, like a steer or hound,

Or like a rooted tree, or stone earth-bound;

But mark how gladly, through their own domains,

The Monks relax or break these iron chains;

While Mercy, uttering, through their voice, a sound

Echoed in Heaven, cries out, “Ye Chiefs, abate

These legalized oppressions! Man–whose name

And nature God disdained not; Man–whose soul

Christ died for–cannot forfeit his high claim

To live and move exempt from all control

Which fellow-feeling doth not mitigate!”