( 5 )
“ My two remaining boys, with sturdy hands,
“ Rear’d the scant produce of our niggard lands:
“ Scant as it was, no more our hearts desir'd,
"No more from us our gen’rous lord requir’d,
“ But ah, sad change! those blessed days are o'er,
"And Peace, Content, and Safety charm no more.
"Another lord now rules those wide domains,
"The avaricious tyrant of the plains,
"Far, far from hence he revels life away,
"In guilty pleasures, our poor means must pay.
"The mossy plains, the mountain’s barren brow
"Must now be tortur’d by the rearing plough,
""And spite of nature, crops be taught to rife,
Which to these northern climes wife Heav’n denies.
"In vain, with sweating brow and weary bands
"We drive to earn the gold our lord demands,
"While cold and hunger, and the dungeon’s gloom,
"Await our failure as its certain doom.
“ To shun these ills that threat my hoary head,
"I seek. in foreign la1 ds precarious bread;
"Forc’d, tho’ my helpless age from guilt be pure,
"The pangs of banish’d felons to endure;
"And all because these hands have vainly try’d
"To force from art what nature has deny’d;
"Because my little all will not suffice
"To pay th’ infatiate claims of Avarice.
“ In vain, of richer climates I am told,
" Whose hills are rich in gems, whole dreams are
