HE can spin,

Then may I set the world on wheels
When she can spin for her living.

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave

Their thread with bones

Do use to chant it; it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love.

When daffodils begin to peer

Twelfth Night..

With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year,
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge-
With hey! the sweet birds, O how they sing,
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;

For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.
I fear not Goliath with a weaver's beam,
Because I know also life is a shuttle.

Winter's Tale.

The Merry Wives of Windsor.

I would I were a weaver,
I could sing Psalms or anything.

Henry IV.

Shakespeare.

Set

Painful thumb.

you to your wheele, and wax

Rich by ductile wool and flax ;

Yarne is an income, and the huswives thread The larder fils with meat, and bin with bread.

Hesperides.

Herrick.

H! turn thine eyes

Where the poor homeless shivering female lies.
She once perhaps, in village plenty blest,
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest;

Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,

Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn;

Pinched with the cold, and shrinking from the shower,
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,

When idly first ambitious of the town,

She left her wheel and robes of country brown.

The Deserted Village.

Goldsmith.

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