His reputation is based on the Scotsballad, "The Life and Death of Habbie Simpson, Piper of Kilbarchan", written c. 1640. It is an interesting picture of the times; and it gave fresh vogue to the popular six-lined stanza which was much used later by Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns (see particularly, Burns's Poor Mailie's Elegy). Two broadside copies were printed before 1700, and it appeared in James Watson's Collection of Poems (1706–1710). Sempill is supposed to be the author also of an epitaph on Sawney Briggs, nephew to Habbie Simpson, written in the same stanza.[1]
He wrote a continuation of his father's Packman's Pater Noster.[1]