Classic Poem

So much he wrested from this miser land:
A meadow plot, a square of furrowed loam,
And the forlorn, weed-cancered waste where stand
The rotting timbers that were once his home;
These, and a decade's harvests — wheat and hay
To feed his meager stock — not over much.
One stack remains, so black now with decay
Even the elk marauders will not touch.

Surely the drab years' dearth, the toil, the ache
Of sleepless war with hail and drouth and blight
One might have deemed were fee enough to make
This trivial ledger entry read aright.
Not so; the usurer land does not relent.
It has his bones at last. It is content.