At length when I was 25, I took myself a wife,
Compelled to leave my father’s house as I had changed my life,
The younger children, in my place, my father’s work would do,
Then daily, as an husbandman, to labour I did go.
My wife and me, though very poor, could keep a pig and cow,
She could sit and spin and knit, and I the land could plough.
There nothing was upon a farm, at all, but I could do,
I find things very different now,—that’s many years ago.
We lived along contented, and banished pain and grief,
We had not occasion then to ask for parish relief,
But now my hairs are grown quite grey, I cannot well engage,
To work as I had used to do, I’m 90 years of age.
But now that I am feeble grown, and poverty do feel,
If, for relief I go, they shove me into a Whig Bastile,[38]
Where I may hang my hoary head, and pine in grief and woe,
My father did not see the like, just 90 years ago.
When a man has laboured all his life to do his country good,
He’s respected just as much when old, as a donkey in a wood,
His days are gone and past, and he may weep in grief and woe,
The times are very different now to 90 years ago.
Now I am 90 years of age, if for relief I do apply,
I must go into a Whig Bastile to end my days and die,
I can no longer labour, as I no longer have,
Then, at the last, just like a dog, they lay me in my grave.
THE NEW FASHIONED FARMER.
Good people all, attend awhile,
Whilst I relate a story,
How the farmers in old England,
Did once support their glory.
When masters liv’d as masters ought,
And happy in their station,
Until at length, their stinking pride,
Has ruined all the Nation.