Following his return to England after a year and half in Italy, and then the publication of his early poems in 1726, Dyer briefly returned to Aberglasney, where he became estranged from his brother Robert. The next several years were spent between London and Herefordshire or on painting trips. In 1734 he restored to profitability a rundown farm belonging to an aunt and spent several more years as a gentleman farmer in other counties. It was at this period too that Dyer began writing again. From then dates the anecdotal pastoral "My Ox Duke". He was also on the lookout for a suitable subject for a longer poem and began work on the unfinished fragment "The Cambro-Briton". Eventually, however, he fell back on the fruits of his Italian travels, published as "The Ruins of Rome" in 1740. It was only much later in his georgic "The Fleece" (1757) that he put to use the insight into the wool industry that he gained as a farmer.