Thrice, oh thrice happy, shepherd’s life and state,
When courts are happiness’ unhappy pawns!
His cottage low, and safely humble gate
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns;
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep:
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep;
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.
No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread
Draw out their silken lives; nor silken pride:
His lambs’ warm fleece well fits his little need,
Not in that proud Sidonian tincture dyed:
No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright;
Nor begging wants his middle fortune bite:
But sweet content exiles both misery and spite.
Instead of music and base flattering tongues,
Which wait to first salute my Lord’s uprise;
The cheerful lark wakes him with early songs,
And birds’ sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes:
In country plays is all the strife he uses,
Or sing, or dance unto the rural Muses;
And, but in music’s sports, all difference refuses.
His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content:
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noon-tide’s rage is spent:
His life is neither tost in boist’rous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease;
Pleas’d and full bless’d he lives, when he his God can please.
His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place:
His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively picture of his father’s face:
Never his humble house or state torment him;
Less he could like, if less his God had sent him;
And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him.
PHINEAS FLETCHER, 1584–1650.