If age and sickness, poverty and pain,
Should each assault me with alternate plagues,
I know mankind is destin'd to complain,
And I submit to torment and fatigues.
The pious farmer, who ne'er misses pray'rs,
With patience suffers unexpected rain;
He blesses Heav'n for what its bounty spares,
And sees, resign'd, a crop of blighted grain.
But, spite of sermons, farmers would blaspheme,
If a star fell to set their thatch on flame.
More verses by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
- Tuesday, St. James's Coffee-House
- The Lover: A Ballad
- Ballad, On A Late Occurrence
- A Ballad
- An Epistle To The Earl Of Burlington