"Lazy sheep, pray tell me why
In the pleasant field you lie,
Eating grass and daisies white,
From the morning till the night:
Everything can something do,
But what kind of use are you?"

"Nay, my little master, nay,
Do not serve me so, I pray!
Don't you see the wool that grows
On my back to make you clothes?
Cold, ah, very cold you'd be,
If you had not wool from me!

"True, it seems a pleasant thing
Nipping daisies in the spring;
But what chilly nights I pass
On the cold and dewy grass,
Or pick my scanty dinner where
All the ground is brown and bare!

"Then the farmer comes at last,
When the merry spring is past,
Cuts my woolly fleece away,
For your coat in wintry day.
Little master, this is why
In the pleasant fields I lie."

ANN TAYLOR.