To dress the vines new labour is required, Nor must the painful husbandman be tired. DRYDEN.

Give me, ye gods, the product of one field, That so I neither may be rich nor poor; And having just enough, not covet more.

DRYDEN.

All was common, and the fruitful earth
Was free to give her unexacted birth.

DRYDEN. Their morning milk the peasants press at night; Their evening milk before the rising light.

DRYDEN.

The peaceful peasant to the wars is prest, The fields lie fallow in inglorious rest.

DRYDEN.

Where the tender rinds of trees disclose Their shooting germs, a swelling knot there grows;

Just in that place a narrow slit we make, Then other buds from bearing trees we take; Inserted thus, the wounded rind we close. DRYDEN.

Your farm requites your pains, Though rushes overspread the neighb'ring plains. DRYDEN.

Rocks lie cover'd with eternal snow;
Thin herbage in the plains, and fruitless fields.
DRYDEN.

Uneasy still within these narrow bounds,
Thy next design is on thy neighbour's grounds:
His crop invites, to full perfection grown;
Thy own seems thin, because it is thy own.

DRYDEN.

T' unload the branches, or the leaves to thin That suck the vital moisture of the vine.

DRYDEN.

The bending scythe

GAY.

The ploughman leaves the task of day,
And trudging homeward whistles on the way.
GAY.

How turnips hide their swelling heads below,
And how the closing coleworts upwards grow.
GAY.
Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes.
GOLDSMITH: Traveller.

Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd can never be supplied.
GOLDSMITH: Deserted Village.

Nor is 't unwholesome to subdue the land
By often exercise; and where before
You broke the earth, again to plow.

MAY.

The ground one year at rest, forget not then
With richest dung to hearten it again.
MAY.

Their bulls they send to pastures far
On hills, or feed them at full racks within.
MAY.
Bring them for food sweet boughs and osiers cut
Nor all the winter long thy hay-rick shut.

MAY.