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And each calm comfort of a home your own
This is bad living: I have spent my life
In hardest toil and unavailing strife,
And here (from forest ambush safe at least)
To me this scanty pittance seems a feast.
I was a plough-boy once; as free from woes
And blithesome as the lark with whom I rose.
Each evening at return a meal I found;
And, tho' my bed was hard, my sleep was sound.
One Whitsuntide, to go to fair, I drest
Like a great bumkin in my Sunday's best;
A primrose posey in my hat I stuck
And to the revel went to try my luck.
From show to show, from booth to booth I stray,
See, stare, and wonder, all the live-long day.
A Sergeant to the fair recruiting came,
Skill'd in man-catching to beat up for game;
Our booth he enter'd and sat down by me;—
Methinks even now the very scene I see!
The canvas roof, the hogshead's running store,
This is bad living: I have spent my life
In hardest toil and unavailing strife,
And here (from forest ambush safe at least)
To me this scanty pittance seems a feast.
I was a plough-boy once; as free from woes
And blithesome as the lark with whom I rose.
Each evening at return a meal I found;
And, tho' my bed was hard, my sleep was sound.
One Whitsuntide, to go to fair, I drest
Like a great bumkin in my Sunday's best;
A primrose posey in my hat I stuck
And to the revel went to try my luck.
From show to show, from booth to booth I stray,
See, stare, and wonder, all the live-long day.
A Sergeant to the fair recruiting came,
Skill'd in man-catching to beat up for game;
Our booth he enter'd and sat down by me;—
Methinks even now the very scene I see!
The canvas roof, the hogshead's running store,
