THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE.
Thrice, oh thrice happy, shepherd’s life and state,
When courts are happiness’ unhappy pawns!
His cottage low, and safely humble gate
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns;
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep:
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep;
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.
No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread
Draw out their silken lives; nor silken pride:
His lambs’ warm fleece well fits his little need,
Not in that proud Sidonian tincture dyed:
No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright;
Nor begging wants his middle fortune bite:
But sweet content exiles both misery and spite.
Instead of music and base flattering tongues,
Which wait to first salute my Lord’s uprise;
The cheerful lark wakes him with early songs,
And birds’ sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes:
In country plays is all the strife he uses,
Or sing, or dance unto the rural Muses;
And, but in music’s sports, all difference refuses.
His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content:
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noon-tide’s rage is spent:
His life is neither tost in boist’rous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease;
Pleas’d and full bless’d he lives, when he his God can please.
His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place:
His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively picture of his father’s face:
Never his humble house or state torment him;
Less he could like, if less his God had sent him;
And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him.
Phineas Fletcher, 1584–1650.