THE OLD LABOURER.
Reading edition
HIS fourscore years have bent a back of oak, His earth-brown cheeks are full of hollow pits; His gnarled hands wander idly as he sits Bending above the hearthstone’s feeble smoke. Threescore and ten slow years he tilled the land; He wrung his bread from out the stubborn soil; He saw his masters flourish through his toil; He held their substance in his horny hand.
Now he is old: he asks for daily bread: He who has sowed the bread he may not taste Begs for the crumbs: he would do no man wrong. The Parish Guardians, when his case is read, Will grant him (yet with no unseemly haste) Just seventeen pence to starve on, seven days long.