Farmling

‘ . . . I, the son of John and Grace Barnes, was born at Rush-hay, a farmling at Bagber in the Parish of Sturminster Newton in the Vale of Blackmore’

And Plough-month peters out . . its thermal power / Squandered in sighs and poems and hopeless thought, / Which corn and honey, wine, soap, wax, oil ought / Upon my farmling to have chivvied into flower.

“What? Why would you need a tractor?” / Melrose drew a fence around his farm animals. “It’s for the farm. Or farmling, perhaps. I don’t want to overextend myself. We’ll need the tractor to turn over the loam. Loam.”