Rizpah

Rizpah
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Wailing, wailing, wailing, the wind over land and sea -
And Willy's voice in the wind, `O mother, come out to me.
'Why should he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go?
For the downs are as bright as day, and the full moon stares at the snow.

http://www.everything2.org/title/Rizpah
`They dared me to do it,' he said, and he never has told me a lie.
I whipt him for robbing an orchard once when he was but a child -
`The farmer dared me to do it,' he said; he was always so wild -
I came into court to the Judge and the lawyers.
I told them my tale,God's own truth -
but they kill'd him, they kill'd him for robbing the mail.
They hang'd him in chains for a show - we had always borne a good name -
To be hang'd for a thief - and then put away - isn't that enough shame?

The story:

1792 A highway robbery by a Shoreham man named Rook, an accomplice to Howell, on the mail at the Goldstone Bottom resulted in the execution of the perpetrators by hanging. The recovery of the bones from the gibbet by Rook's mother, inspired Tennyson's poem 'Rizpah'.