The Miller

In a plain pleasant cottage, conveniently neat,
With a mill and some meadows — a freehold estate,
A well-meaning miller by labour supplies
Those blessings that grandeur to great ones denies:
No passions to plague him, no cares to torment,
His constant companions are Health and Content;
Their lordships in lace may remark, if they will,
He's honest, though daub'd with the dust of his mill.

Ere the lark's early carols salute the new day,
He springs from his cottage as jocund as May;
He cheerfully whistles, regardless of care,
Or sings the last ballad he bought at the fair:
While courtiers are toil'd in the cobwebs of state,
Or bribing elections, in hopes to be great,
No fraud or ambition his bosom e'er fill,
Contented he works, if there's grist for his mill.

On Sunday bedeck'd in his homespun array,
At church he's the loudest to chaunt or to pray;
He sits to a dinner of plain English food,
Though simple the pudding, his appetite's good.
At night, when the priest and exciseman are gone,
He quaffs at the alehouse with Roger and John,
Then reels to his pillow, and dreams of no ill;
No monarch more blest than the man of the mill.