Who make poor "I should". "will do" wait upon In all the clam'rous cry of starving want, They dun benevolence with shameless We own they're prudent, but who feels they're good? front; Oblige them, patronize their tinsel lays, Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social They persecute you all your future eye! days! God's image rudely etched on base Ere my poor soul such deep damnation alloy ! stain, But come ye who the godlike pleasure My horny fist assume the plough again ; The piebald jacket let me patch once know, Whose arms of love would grasp the human race : Come, thou who giv'st with all courtier's grace; a Friend of my life, true patron of my rhymes ! Prop of my dearest hopes for future times. Why shrinks my soul, half blushing, half afraid, Backward, abashed to ask thy friendly aid? I know my need, I know thy giving hand, I crave thy friendship at thy kind com- But there are such who court the tuneful Heavens! should the branded character Whose verse in manhood's pride sub- Yet vilest reptiles in their begging prose. Seek not the proofs in private life to find; Pity the best of words should be but wind! So to heaven's gates the lark's shrill song ascends, But grovelling on the earth the carol ends. more; On eighteenpence a week I've lived before. Though, thanks to Heaven, I dare even that last shift! I trust, meantime, my boon is in thy gift: That, placed by thee upon the wishedfor height, Where, man and nature fairer in her sight, My Muse may imp her wing for some sublimer flight. A MOTHER'S LAMENT FOR THE [Composed in the saddle, while riding from Nithsdale to Mauchline, a distance of forty-six September of 1788, in memory of a youth of miles, before daybreak one morning in the eighteen or nineteen, the then recently deceased son of Mrs. Fergusson of Craigdarroch, who was supposed thus to give utterance to her lamentations.] FATE gave the word, the arrow sped, And pierced my darling's heart; Life can to me impart. By cruel hands the sapling drops, In dust dishonoured laid: The mother-linnet in the brake Now, fond, I bare my breast; ELEGY ON THE YEAR 1788. [This Elegy, which the Poet also entitled a Sketch, was dated by him the New Year's Day of 1789. It first found its way into the newspapers, afterwards into the chapbooks, and eventually into his collected writings.] FOR lords or kings I dinna mourn, But, oh! prodigious to reflec'! The Spanish empire 's tint a head, Ye ministers, come mount the pu'pit, And cry till ye be hoarse and roopit, For Eighty-eight he wished you weel, And gied you a' baith gear and meal; E'en mony a plack, and mony a peck, Ye ken yoursel's, for little feck! Ye bonnie lasses, dight your een, Observe the very nowte and sheep, O Eighty-nine, thou 's but a bairn, But, like himsel', a full, free agent, ODE. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS. OSWALD OF AUCHINCRUIVE. [Composed during a tempestuous night's ride across the moors and hills of Ayrshire, from Sanquhar to New Cumnock. At Bailie Wigham's, the only tolerable inn at Sanquhar, the Poet had just taken shelter from the storm one night in the January of 1789, and was beginning to hob-and-nob over a bowl of punch with his friend and landlord, the Bailie, when further refreshment was summarily denied to both man and beast-Burns being compelled to remount his jaded steed, and to pursue his journey through the foul weather, by reason of the incursion upon the little hostelry of the funeral train of the great lady of the neighbourhood, who all her life had been an object of detestation to her servants and tenantry. When the Poet, drenched and angered, arrived at New Cumnock, he sat down before a good peat fire, and penned the subjoined.] DWELLER in yon dungeon dark, Who in widow-weeds appears, Laden with unhonoured years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse! STROPHE. View the withered beldam's faceCan thy keen inspection trace FRAGMENT. INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX. [Composed as a mere poetical whim, the chief part of this sketch was enclosed in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, on the 4th of April, 1789. The concluding twelve lines were first printed in 1839, from the Poet's manuscript, in the Aldine edition, published by Pickering, and are therefore here Aught of humanity's sweet melting spaced apart from the others as supplementary.] Good Lord, what is man? for as simple But truce with abstraction, and truce he looks, with a Muse Do but try to develop his hooks and his Whose rhymes you'll perhaps, Sir, ne'er crooks; deign to peruse: With his depths and his shallows, his Will you leave your justings, your jars, good and his evil; and your quarrels, All in all he's a problem must puzzle the Contending with Billy for proud-nodding devil. On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours, That, like the Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours; Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him? laurels? My much-honoured patron, believe your poor Poet, Your courage much more than your prudence you show it, In vain with Squire Billy for laurels you struggle, He'll have them by fair trade, if not, he will smuggle; Pull the string, ruling passion the picture Not cabinets even of kings would conceal will show him. What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular truth should have For, spite of his fine theoretic positions, 'em, He'd up the back stairs, and, by God, he would steal 'em! Then feats like Squire Billy's you ne'er can achieve 'em, It is not outdo him, the task is out-thieve him! Some sort all our qualities, each to its tribe, describe; Have you found this, or t'other? there's ON SEEING A WOUNDED HARE more in the wind, As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find. But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan, LIMP BY ME, WHICH A FELLOW HAD JUST SHOT AT. [Enclosed on the 4th of May, 1789, from Ellisland, to the Poet's friend, Alexander Cunning In the make of that wonderful creature ham. In the letter accompanying the verses Burns says winningly, "One morning lately, as called Man, I was out pretty early in the fields sowing No two virtues, whatever relation they some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a shot claim, from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a Nor even two different shades of the poor little wounded hare came crippling by me." Hence this metrical outburst of his indignation. The original version, which was curiously inferior Though like as was ever twin brother to to the later one, here alone preserved, the author brother, enclosed to Dr. Gregory, requesting his opinion upon it. His criticism upon the little poem, as Possessing the one shall imply you've it then stood, was so mercilessly condemnatory, same, 'the other. that Burns soon afterwards wrote in one of his letters-"Dr. Gregory is a good man, but he And through my lugs gi'es mony a crucifies me;" and in another, "I believe in the iron justice of Dr. Gregory; but, like the devils, I believe and tremble."] 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 The bitter little that of life remains : verdant plains twang, Wi' gnawing vengeance; When fevers burn, or ague freezes, But thee-thou hell o' a' diseases, Adown my beard the slavers trickle! To thee shall home, or food, or pastime I kick the wee stools o'er the mickle, As round the fire the giglets keckle, To see me loup; yield. Seek, mangled wretch, some place of While, raving mad, I wish a heckle wonted rest No more of rest, but now thy dying bed! The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head, Were in their doup. Of a' the numerous human dools, The cold earth with thy bloody bosom Or worthy friends raked i' the mools, prest. Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait Sad sight to see! Where'er that place be priests ca' hell, And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn And ranked plagues their numbers tell, thy hapless fate. In dreadfu' raw, Amang them a'! O thou grim mischief-making chiel, [Written apparently in May, 1789, about the time when he addressed a letter to his Edinburgh publisher, Creech, in which he spoke of his whole Gi'e a' the faes o' Scotland's weal inner man being engrossed by the delightful sensations of an omnipotent toothache.] My curse upon thy venomed stang, That shoots my tortured gums alang; A towmond's toothache! -0 |