TO THE MEMORY OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART.
FALSE flatterer, Hope, away!
Nor think to lure us as in days of yore;
We solemnize this sorrowing natal day
To prove our loyal truth; we can no more;
And owning Heaven's mysterious sway,
Submissive low adore.
Ye honoured mighty dead!
Who nobly perished in the glorious cause,
Your king, your country, and her laws!
From great Dundee, who smiling Victory led,
And fell a martyr in her arms
(What breast of northern ice but warms?)
To bold Balmerino's undying name,
Whose soul of fire, lighted at heaven's high flame,
Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim.
Nor unavenged your fate shall be,
It only lags the fatal hour;
Your blood shall with incessant cry
Awake at last th' unsparing power;
As from the cliff, with thundering course,
The snowy ruin smokes along,
With doubling speed and gathering force,
Till deep it crashing whelms the cottage in the vale!
FAIR fa' your honest, sonsie3 face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin' race!
Aboon them a' ye tak' your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm :
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
1 At the battle of Killiecrankie.
2 The Haggis is a dish peculiar to Scotland. It is made of minced offal of mutton, meal, suet, and seasoning, tied tightly up in a sheep's stomach and boiled in it.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin' wad help to mend a mill
In time o' need,
While through your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,2
An' cut you up wi' ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, oh, what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin', rich!
Then horn for horn they stretch an' strive,
De'il tak' the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a' their weel swalled kytes 3 belyve
Are bent like drums:
Then auld guidman, maist like to ryve,
Bethankit hums.
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve
He'll mak' it whissle;
An' legs, an' arms, an' heads will sned,'
Like taps o' thristle."
Ye Powers, wha mak' mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
WHEN by a generous public's kind acclaim,
That dearest meed is granted-honest fame:
When here your favour is the actor's lot,
Nor even the man in private life forgot;
What breast so dead to heavenly virtue's glow,
But heaves impassioned with the grateful throe?
Poor is the task to please a barbarous throng,
It needs no Siddons' powers in Southern's song;
But here an ancient ñation famed afar
For genius, learning high, as great in war—
Hail, Caledonia! name for ever dear!
Before whose sons I'm honoured to appear!
Where every science-every nobler art-
That can inform the mind, or mend the heart,
Is known; as grateful nations oft have found,
Far as the rude barbarian marks the bound.
Philosophy, no idle pedant dream,
Here holds her search by heaven-taught Reason's beam;
Here History paints with elegance and force,
The tide of Empires' fluctuating course;
Here Douglas forms wild Shakespeare into plan,
And Harley rouses all the god in man,
When well-formed taste and sparkling wit unite
With manly lore, or female beauty bright,
(Beauty, where faultless symmetry and grace,
Can only charm us in the second place,)
Witness, my heart, how oft with panting fear,
As on this night, I've met these judges here!
But still the hope Experience taught to live,
Equal to judge-you 're candid to forgive.
No hundred-headed Riot here we meet,
With decency and law beneath his feet;
Nor Insolence assumes fair Freedom's name:
Like Caledonians, you applaud or blame.
A favourite actor in Edinburgh.
2 That splashes in bowls.
Henry Mackenzie, author of "The Man of Feeling."
O Thou dread Power! whose empire-giving hand
Has oft been stretched to shield the honoured land,
Strong may she glow with all her ancient fire!
May every son be worthy of his sire;
Firm may she rise with generous disdain
At Tyranny's, or direr Pleasure's, chain;
Still self-dependent in her native shore,
Bold may she brave grim Danger's loudest roar,
Till Fate the curtain drops on worlds to be no more!
HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO GAVIN HAMILTON, ESQ.
"Great Nature spoke-observant man obeyed."-POPE.
LET other heroes boast their scars,
The marks of sturt and strife;
And other poets sing of wars,
The plagues of human life:
Shame fa' the fun, wi' sword and gun,
To slap mankind like lumber!
I sing his name and nobler fame,
Wha multiplies our number.
Great Nature spoke, with air benign,
"Go on, ye human race!
This lower world I you resign :
Be fruitful and increase.
The liquid fire of strong desire,
I've poured it in each bosom;
Here, in this hand, does mankind stand,
And there is beauty's blossom!"
The hero of these artless strains,
A lowly bard was he,
Who sang his rhymes in Coila's plains,
With mickle mirth and glee;
Kind Nature's care had given his share
Large of the flaming current;
And all devout, he never sought
To stem the sacred torrent.
He felt the powerful high behest
Thrill, vital, through and through;
And sought a correspondent breast
To give obedience due:
Propitious Powers screened the
From mildews of abortion!
And lo! the Bard, a great reward,
Has got a double portion!
VERSES ON THE DEATH OF J. M‘LEOD.
Auld cantie Coil may count the day,
As annual it returns,
The third of Libra's equal sway,
That gave another Burns,
With future rhymes and other times,
To emulate his sire;
To sing auld Coil in nobler style,
With more poetic fire.
Ye powers of peace, and peaceful song,
Look down with gracious eyes;
And bless auld Coila, large and long,
With multiplying joys:
Lang may she stand to prop the land,
The flower of ancient nations;
And Burnses spring, her fame to sing,
To endless generations!
ON READING IN A NEWSPAPER THE DEATH OF JOHN M'LEOD, ESQ., BROTHER TO A YOUNG LADY, A PARTICULAR FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR'S.
SAD thy tale, thou idle page,
And rueful thy alarms:
Death tears the brother of her love
From Isabella's arms.
Sweetly deckt with pearly dew
The morning rose may blow;
But cold successive noontide blasts
May lay its beauties low.
Fair on Isabella's morn
The sun propitious smiled;
But, long ere noon, succeeding clouds
Succeeding hopes beguiled.
Fate oft tears the bosom chords
That nature finest strung;
So Isabella's heart was formed,
And so that heart was wrung.
Were it in the Poet's power,
Strong as he shares the grief
That pierces Isabella's heart,
To give that heart relief!
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