"I've seen sae mony changefu' years, Alike unknowing and unknown : I bear alane my lade o' care, His country's pride, his country's stay: For a' the life of life is dead, And hope has left my aged ken, On forward wing for ever fled. "Awake, thy last sad voice, my harp! The voice of woe and wild despair! Awake, resound thy latest lay, Then sleep in silence evermair! And thou, my last, best, only friend, That fillest an untimely tomb, Accept this tribute from the bard Thou brought from fortune's mirkest gloom. "In poverty's low barren vale, Thick mists, obscure, involved me round; "Oh! why has worth so short a date, A day to me so full of woe! "The bridegroom may forget the bride That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; And a' that thou hast done for me!" LAMENT OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, ON THE APPROACH OF SPRING. Now Nature hangs her mantle green On every blooming tree, And spreads her sheets o' daisies white Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams, But nought can glad the weary wight Now laverocks wake the merry morn, Aloft on dewy wing; The merle, in his noontide bower, Makes woodland echoes ring; The mavis mild wi' many a note, Now blooms the lily by the bank, I was the Queen o' bonnie France, And never-ending care. But as for thee, thou false woman, My sister and my fae, Grim vengeance, yet, shall whet a sword That through thy soul shall gae: The weeping blood in woman's breast Was never known to thee; Nor th' balm that draps on wounds of woe Frae woman's pitying ee. My son! my son! may kinder stars Upon thy fortune shine; And may those pleasures gild thy reign, That ne'er wad blink on mine! God keep thee frae thy mother's faes, Or turn their hearts to thee: And where thou meet'st thy mother's friend, Oh! soon, to me, may summer-suns And in the narrow house o' death And the next flowers that deck the spring, ON LIFE. ADDRESSED TO COLONEL DE My honour'd colonel, deep I feel The steep Parnassus, Surrounded thus by bolus pill, And potion glasses. O what a canty warld were it, Would pain, and care, and sickness spare it; And fortune favour worth and merit, As they deserve: (And aye a rowth, roast beef and claret; Syne wha wad starve ?) Dame Life, though fiction out may trick her, And in paste gems and frippery deck her Oh! flickering, feeble, and unsicker I've found her still, Aye wavering like the willow wicker, "Tween good and ill. ; Then that curst carmagnole, auld Satan, Our sinfu' saul to get a claut on Syne, whip! his tail ye'll ne'er cast saut on, Ah Nick! ah Nick! it isna fair, Syne weave, unseen, thy spider snare Poor man the flie, aft bizzies by, Already in thy fancy's eye, Thy sicker treasure. Soon heels-o'er-gowdy! in he gangs, As, dangling in the wind, he hangs But lest you think I am uncivil, To plague you with this draunting drivel, Abjuring a' intentions evil, I quat my pen: The Lord preserve us frae the devil! Amen! amen! |