The Old Labourer

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Title:     The Old Labourer
Author: Arthur Symons [More Titles by Symons]

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.

[The end]
Arthur Symons's poem: Old Labourer

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