Except to clear the corn from off the soil;
Much less, an armoury of tools, with beeves,
And a train of hirelings to drudge and moil.
Some aged ploughman will be heard complain,
That “labour as he may, how small the gain!
Harder times these than those his father knew;
A grateful task to be God-fearing then!
True, that, man for man, a husbandman’s plot
Might seem, in measurement, a smaller plot
Than is now allowed; but reckon by yield,