"Come forward . . . Stout Wandsworthites and Claphamites — and fight to the bitter End!"
"The Cry of the Commoners"
Ho, Wandsworth to the rescue! Ho, Clapham to the front —
Ho, Wimbledon! Ho, Tooting! Ho, Streatham, share the brunt!
EARL SPENCER, the devourer of Commons, opes his jaw,
To swallow such small fragments as yet have 'scaped his craw.
By cantle after cantle he has cribbed the broad domain
Where once the cows of Commoners grazed o'er the unfenced plain.
Till with Prison and Reformatory, with coal yard, Church and School,
A wretched, ragged remnant’s free from brick and mortar’s rule.
Furze, fern and broom are banished; black pales shut in the sward:
Birch, grove and poplar clump give way to the builder’s hideous hoard:
And perky villa residence, or flimsy six-roomed grow,
In still encroaching ugliness around the common grow.
So benevolent of purpose, so open of his hand,
I'd rather that his Lordship had been of his own land;
If he wanted to give sites for Schools, and ground for prisons thus,
Ad libitum, he might have given, so he had not plundered us.
There's PEEK will give his thousand, if his neighbours raise their four,
To fight the cause o' the Commoners, and down-trod rights restore:
While a rongh and ready regiment — whose acts I don’t excuse —
Will pull down CORTEKER's palings, in defiance of the blues!
But as 'tis better to appeal to law, than law defy,
As the Court and not the Common is the place the cause to try,
Come forward with your money your Commons to defend,
Stout Wandsworthites and Claphamites — and fight to the bitter End !
Commoners - i.e. common people versus the aristocrat Spencer
cantle: A splinter, slice, or sliver broken off
palings: fences
Peek =
Corteker = Costeker
"in defiance of the blues" - possibly blue-blooded i.e.the aristocracy?
NB Franco-Prussian War