This is a poem in sympathy with radical thinking of the time. In the hopeless voice of its protagonist it protests against the many social causes of suffering, such as the arrogant possession of property, enclosure, wealth's oppression of poverty, war, and soldiering.
Here, for a moment, the elevated romantic sensibility meets with the helpless victim of society's greed and power, so ruthless and unfeeling, that it kills the mother's children.
The vagrant does endure, but there is no consolation: finally she "turned away" and "wept; because she had no more to say/Of that perpetual weight which on her spirit lay".