The Old Labourer

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.