tily join,

The Queen, and the rest of the gentry, Be they wise, be they foolish, is nothing of

mine;

Their title's avowed by my country, But why of that epocha make such a fuss, That gave us the Hanover stem; If bringing them over was lucky for us, I'm sure 'twas as lucky for them. But loyalty, truce! we're on dangerous ground,

Who knows how the fashions may alter? The doctrine, to-day, that is loyalty sound, To-morrow may bring us a halter!

I send you a trifle, a head of a bard,

A trifle scarce worthy your care; But accept it, good Sir, as a mark of regard, Sincere as a saint's dying prayer, Now life's chilly evening dim shades on your And ushers the long dreary night; [eye, But you like the star that athwart gilds the Your course to the latest is bright. [sky,

A Skrtrh. (210)

A LITTLE, upright, pert, tart tripping wight,
And still his precious self his dear delight:
Who loves his own smart shadow in the
streets,

Better than e'er the fairest she he meets,
A man of fashion too, he made his tour,
Learn'd vive la bagatelle, et vive l'amour
So travelled monkies their grimace improve,
Polish their grin, nay, sigh for ladies love.
Much specious lore, but little understood;
Veneering oft outshines the solid wood:
His solid sense-by inches you must tell,
But mete his cunning by the old Scots ell!
His meddling vanity, a busy fiend

Still making work his selfish craft must mend.

Ta Aliss Cruikshanks.

A VERY YOUNG LADY. (211)

WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF OF A BOOK PRE-
SENTED TO HER BY THE AUTHOR.

BEAUTEOUS rose-bud, young and gay,
Blooming in thy early May,
Never may'st thou, lovely flow'r,
Chilly shrink in sleety show'r;
Never Boreas' hoary path,
Never Eurus' poisonous breath,
Never baleful stellar lights,
Taint thee with untimely blights!
Never, never reptile thief
Riot on thy virgin leaf!

Thy bosom blushing still with dew!
May'st thou long, sweet crimson gem,
Richly deck thy native stem:
'Till some evening, sober, calm,
Dropping dews and breathing balm,
While all around the woodland rings,
And every bird thy requiem sings;
Thou, amid the dirgeful sound,
Shed thy dying honours round,
And resign to parent earth

The loveliest form she e'er

gave

birth.

ON HIS LEAVING EDINBURGH.

CLARINDA, mistress of my soul,
The measur'd time is run!
The wretch beneath the dreary pole
So marks his latest sun.

To what dark cave of frozen night
Shall poor Sylvander hie;
Depriv'd of thee, his life and light,
The sun of all his joy.

We part-but, by these precious drops
That fill thy lovely eyes!

No other light shall guide my steps
Till thy bright beams arise.

She, the fair sun of all her sex,

Has blest my glorious day; And shall a glimmering planet fix My worship to its ray?

Epistle to Bugh Parker. (213)

In this strange land, this uncouth clime,
A land unknown to prose or rhyme ;
Where words ne'er crossed the muse's
Nor limpet in poetic shackles [heckles,

A land that prose did never view it,
Except when drunk he stacher't thro' it ;
Here, ambush'd by the chimla cheek,
Hid in an atmosphere of reek,

I hear a wheel thrum i' the neuk,
I hear it-for in vain I leuk.
The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel,
Enhusked by a fog infernal:

Here for my wonted rhyming raptures,
I sit and count my sins by chapters,
For life and spunk like ither Christians,
I'm dwindled down to mere existence,
Wi' nae converse but Gallowa' bodies,
Wi' nae-kenn'd face but Jenny Geddes.
Jenny, my Pegasean pride!

Dowie she saunters down Nithside,
And aye a westlin heuk she throws,
While tears hap o'er her auld brown nose!
Was it for this, wi' canny care,
Thou bure the Bard through many a shire?
At howes or hillocks never stumbled,
And late or early never grumbled ?
Oh, had I power like inclination,
I'd heeze thee up a constellation,

To canter with the Sagitarre,
Or loup the ecliptic like a bar!
Or turn the pole like any arrow;
Or, when auld Phoebus bids good-morrow,
Down the zodiac urge the race,
And cast dirt on his godship's face;
For I could lay my bread and kail
He'd ne'er cast salt upo' thy tail.
Wi' a' this care and a' this grief,
And sma', sma' prospect of relief,
And nought but peat-reek i' my head
How can i write what ye can read?
Tarbolton, twenty-fourth o' June,
Ye'll find me in a better tune;
But till we meet and weet our whistle,
Tak this excuse for nae epistle.

ROBERT Burns.

Written

IN FRIARS' CARSE HERMITAGE, ON THE
BANKS OF NITH. (214).

THOU whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed,
Be thou deckt in silken stole,
Grave these maxims on thy soul.

Life is but a day at most,
Sprung from night; in darkness lost;
Day, how rapid in its flight-
Day, how few must see the night;

Hope not sunshine every hour,
Fear not clouds will always lower.
Happiness is but a name,

Make content and ease thy aim.
Ambition is a meteor gleam;
Fame a restless idle dream :
Pleasures, insects on the wing
Round Peace, the tend'rest flower of Spring;
Those that sip the dew alone,
Make the butterflies thy own ;
Those that would the bloom devour,
Crush the locusts-save the flower.
For the future be prepar'd,
Guard wherever thou can'st guard;
But thy utmost duly done,
Welcome what thou can'st not shun.
Follies past, give thou to air,
Make their consequence thy care:
Keep the name of man in mind,
And dishonour not thy kind.
Reverence with lowly heart,
Him whose wondrous work thou art;
Keep his goodness still in view,
Thy trust-and thy example, too.
Stranger, go; Heaven be thy guide!
Quoth, the Beadsman on Nithside
THOU whom chance may hither lead.
Be thou clad in russet weed,
Be thou deckt in silken stole,
Grave these counsels on thy soul.

Life is but a day at most,
Sprung from night, in darkness lost;
Hope not sunshine ev'ry hour,
Fear not clouds will always lower.

As youth and love with sprightly dance,
Beneath thy morning star advance,
Pleasure with her siren air
May delude the thoughtless pair;
Let Prudence bless Enjoyment's cup,
Then raptur'd sip, and sip it up,
As thy day grows warm and high,
Life's meridian flaming nigh,

Dost thou spurn the humble vale?
Life's proud summits would'st thou scale?
Check thy climbing step elate,

Evils lurk in felon wait :
Dangers, eagle-pinion'd, bold,
Soar around each cliffy hold,

While cheerful peace, with linnet song,
Chants the lowly dells among.
As the shades of ev'ning close,
Beck'ning thee to long repose.
As life itself becomes disease,
Seek the chimney-neuk of ease;
There ruminate with sober thought,

On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought;
And teach the sportive younkers round,
Saws of experience, sage and sound,

Say, man's true, genuine estimate,
The grand criterion of his fate,
Is not-art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow?
Wast thou cottager or king?
Peer or peasant?-no such thing!
Did many talents gild thy span ?
Or frugal nature grudge thee one?
Tell them, and press it on their mind,
As thou thyself must shortly find,
The smile or frown of awful Heav'n,
To virtue or to vice is giv'n.
Say, to be just, and kind, and wise,
There solid self-enjoyment lies;
That foolish, selfish, faithless ways
Lead to the wretched, vile and base.
Thus resign'd and quiet, creep
To the bed of lasting sleep;
Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake,
Night, where dawn shall never break.
Till future life, future no more,
To light and joy the good restore,
To light and joy unknown before.
Stranger, go! Heav'n be thy guide!
Quoth, the Beadsman of Nith-side.

Extempore to Captain Riddel,

OF GLENRIDDLE, ON RETURNING A NEWSPAPER. (215)

Ellisland, Monday Evening.

Your news and review, Sir, I've read through and through, Sir,

With little admiring or blaming; The papers are barren of home-news or foreign,

No murders or rapes worth the naming. Our friends, the reviewers, those chippers and hewers,

Are judges of mortar and stone, Sir; But of meet or unmeet, in a fabric complete, I'll boldly pronounce they are none, Sir. My goose-quill too rude is to tell all your goodness

Bestowed on your servant, the Poet; Would to God I had one like a beam of the

sun,

And then all the world, Sir, should know it!

A Mother's Lament.

for the DEATH OF HER Son. (216)
FATE gave the word, the arrow sped,
And pierc'd my darling's heart!
And with him all the joys are fled
Life can to me impart.

By cruel hands the sapling drops,
In dust dishonour'd laid:
So fell the pride of all my hopes,
My age's future shade.

The mother linnet in the brake
Bewails her ravish'd young ;
So I, for my lost darling's sake,
Lament the live-day long.
Death, oft I've fear'd thy fatal blow,
Now, fond I bare my breast,
Oh, do thou kindly lay me low
With him I love, at rest!

Elegy

ON THE YEAR 1788.

FOR Lords or Kings I dinna mourn,
F'en let them,die-for that they're born:
But oh! prodigious to reflec'!
A towmont, Sirs, is gane to wreck!
Oh Eighty-eight, in thy sma' space
What dire events ha'e taken place!
Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us!
In what a pickle thou hast left us !
The Spanish empire's tint a head,
And my auld teethless Bawtie's dead;
The tulzie's sair 'tween Pitt and Fox,
And our guidwife's wee birdie cocks ;
The tane is game, a bluidie devil,
But to the hen-birds unco civil :
The tither's something dear o' treadin',
But better stuff ne'er claw'd a midden.
Ye ministers, come mount the pu'pit'
And cry till ye be hoarse or roupit,
For Eighty-eight he wish'd you weel,
And gied you a' baith gear and meal;
E'en mony a plack, and moný a peck,
Ye ken yoursels, for little feck!
Ye bonnie lasses' dight your e'en,
For some o' you ha'e tint a frien';
In Eighty-eight, ye ken, was ta'en,
What ye'll ne'er hae to gie again.
Observe the very nowte and sheep,
How dowf and dowie now they creep;
Nay, even the yirth itsel' does cry,
For Embro' wells are grutten dry.
Oh Eighty-nine, thou's but a bairn,
And no owre auld, I hope, to learn!
Thou beardless boy, I pray tak' care,
Thou now has got thy daddy's chair,
Nae hand-cuff'd, muzzl'd, hap-shackl'd Re-
But like himsel', a full free agent, [gent,
Be sure ye follow out the plan
Nae waur than he did, honest man!
As muckle better as you can.

Address to the Tooth-Ache.

My curse upon thy venom'd stang,
That shoots my tortur'd gums alang;
And thro' my lugs gies mony a twang,
Wi' gnawing vengeance;

Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang,
Like racking engines!

When fevers burn, or ague freezes,
Rheumatics gnaw, or cholic squeezes ;
Our neighbour's sympathy may ease us,
Wi' pitying moan;

But thee-thou hell o' a' diseases,

Aye mocks our groan!

Adown my beard the slavers trickle!
I kick the wee stools o'er the mickle,
As round the fire the giglets keckie,
To see me loup;

While, raving mad, I wish a heckle
Were in their doup.

O' a' the num'rous human dools,
Ill har'sts, daft bargains, cutty-stools,
Or worthy friends rak'd i' the mools,
Sad sight to see!

The tricks o' knaves, or fash o' fools-
Thou bear'st the gree.

Where'er that place be priests ca' hell,
Whence a' the tones o' mis'ry yell,
And ranked plagues their numbers tell,
In dreadfu' raw,

Thou, Toothache, surely bear'st the bell
Amang them a'!

Oh thou grim mischief-making chiel,
That gars the notes of discord squeel,
Till daft mankind aft dance a reel
In gore a shoe-thick !--
Gie a' the faes o' Scotland's weal

A towmond's Toothache!

ONE,

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS.
OSWALD. (217)

DWELLER in yon dungeon dark,
Hangman of creation, mark!
Who in widow-weeds appears,
Laden with unhonoured years,
Noosing with care a bursting purse,
Baited with many a deadly curse!

STROPHE.

View the wither'd beldam's face-
Can thy keen inspection trace

Aught of humanity's sweet melting grace ?
Note that eye, 'tis rheum o'erflows,
Pity's flood there never rose.

See these hands, ne'er stretch'd to save,
Hands that took-but never gave.

Keeper of Mammon's iron chest,
Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest
She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest!

ANTISTROPHE.

Plunderer of armies, lift thine eyes,
(Awhile forbear, ye tort'ring fiends ;)
Seest thou whose step, unwilling, hither
bends?

No fallen angel, hurl'd from upper skies;
'Tis thy trusty quondam mate,
Doom'd to share thy fiery fate,
She, tardy, heil-ward plies,

EPODE.

And are they of no more avail,

Ten thousand glitt'ring pounds a-year?
In other words, can Mammon fail,
Omnipotent as he is here?

Oh, bitter mock'ry of the pompous bier,
While down the wretched vital part is driv'n!
The cave-lodg'd beggar, with a conscience
clear,

Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to Heav'n.

Letter to James Tennant,

OF GLENCONNER. (218)
AULD Comrade dear, and brither sinner,
How's a' the folk about Glenconner?
How do you this blae, eastlin wind,
That's like to blaw a body blind?
For me, my faculties are frozen,
And ilka member nearly dozen'd.
I've sent you here, by Johnnie Simson,
Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on :---
Smith, wi' his sympathetic feeling,
And Reid, to common sense appealing.
Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
And meikle Greek and Latin mangled,
Till wi' their logic-jargon tir'd,
And in the depth of science mir'd,
To common sense they now appeal,
What wives and wabsters see and feel.

But, hark ye, friend! I charge you strictly,
Peruse them, and return them quickly,
For now I'm grown sae cursed douce
I pray and ponder butt the house;
My shins, my lane, I there sit roastin',
Perusing Bunyan, Brown, and Boston;
Till bye and bye, if I haud on,
I'll grunt a blouset gospel groan:
Already I begin to try it,
To cast my e'en up like a pyet,
When by the gun she tumbles o'er,
Flutt'ring and gasping in her gore:
Sae shortly you shall see me bright,
A burning and a shining light.

My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen,
The ace and wale o' honest men:
When bending down wi' auld
grey hairs,
Beneath the load of years and cares,
May He who made him still support him,
And views beyond the grave comfort him.
His worthy fam❜ly, far and near
God bless them a' wi' grace and gear!
My auld schoolfellow, preacher Willie,
The manly tar, my mason Billie,
And Auchenbay, I wish him joy;
If he's a parent, lass or boy,

May he be dad, and Meg the mither,
Just five-and-forty years thegither!
And no forgetting wabster Charlie,
I'm told he offers very fairly.
And, Lord remember singing Sannock,
Wi' hale breeks, sexpence, and a bannock;
And next my auld acquaintance Nancy,
Since she is fitted to her fancy;

And her kind stars hae airted till her

A good chiel wi' a pickle siller.
My kindest, best respects I sen' it,
To cousin Kate and sister Janet;
Tell them, frae me, wi' chiels be cautious,
For, faith, they'll aiblins fin' them fashious.
And lastly, Jamie, for yoursel,
May guardian angels tak a spell,
And steer you seven miles south o' hell.
But first, before you see heaven's glory,
May ye get mony a merry story,
Mony a laugh, and mony a drink,
And

aye enough o' needfu' clink.
Now fare ye weel, and joy be wï' you,
For my sake this I beg it o' you,
Assist poor Simson a' ye can,
Ye'll fin' him just an honest man:
Sae I conclude, and quat my chanter,
Your's, saint or sinner,

ROB THE RANTER.

With knowledge so vast, and with judgment
so strong,
[wrong;
No man with the half of 'em e'er went far
With passions so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite
right;-

A sorry, poor misbegot son of the muses,
For using thy name offers fifty excuses.

Good I―d, what is man? for as simple he
looks;
[crooks,

Do but try to develope his hooks and his With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, [devil. All in all he's a problem must puzzle the

On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours,

That, like th' Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours;

Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him?

Pull the string, ruling passion the picture

will show him.

What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling, particular truth should have miss'd him;

For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,
Mankind is a science defies definitions.

Some sort all our qualities, each to its tribe, And think human nature they truly describe; Have you found this, or t'other! there's more in the wind, [you'll find.

As by one drunken fellow his comrades But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan, In the make of that wonderful creature call'd

man,

No two virtues, whatever relation they claim, Nor even two different shades of the same, Though like as was ever twin brother to brother, [other. Possessing the one shall imply you've the

On Sering a Wounded Bare

LIMP BY ME, WHICH A FELLOW HAD JUST SHOT. (219)

INHUMAN man! curse on thy barb'rous art, And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye; May never pity soothe thee with a sigh Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart.

Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field! The bitter little that of life remains ;

No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains

To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield.