Since I have had cottage and reckoning to keep.
To seek silver for the king, my seed I have sold,
And my land has lain fallow and learned how to sleep.
Since they took my fair cattle away from the fold,
When I think of old joys I am ready to weep;
Thus are bred so many of these beggars bold,
And our rye is rotten and rank ere we reap.
Rank is our rye and rotten in the straw,
Because of foul weather by brook and by shore;
Thus wakes in this world the worst woe men e'er saw,