Heaven spare you lang to kiss the breath
O' mony flow'ry simmers!
And bless your bonie lasses baith,
I'm tald they 're loosome kimmers!

And God bless young Dunaskin's laird,
The blossom of our gentry!

And may he wear an auld man's beard,
A credit to his country.

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 fabrick complete,
I'll boldy 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!

To TERRAUGHTY,*

On his Birth-Day.

HEALTH to the Maxwell's vet'ran Chief!
Health, ay unsour'd by care or grief:
Inspir'd, I turn'd Fate's sybil leaf,

This natal morn,

I see thy life is stuff o' prief,

Scarce quite half worn.-

This day thou metes threescore eleven,
And I can tell that bounteous Heaven
(The second sight, ye ken, is given

To ilka POET,)

On thee a tack o' seven times seven

Will yet bestow it.

If envious buckies view wi' sorrow

Thy lengthen'd days on this blest morrow,
May desolation's lang-teeth'd harrow,

Nine miles an hour,

Rake them, like Sodom and Gomorrah,

In brunstane stoure

But for thy friends, and they are mony,
Baith honest men and lasses bonie,
May couthie fortune, kind and cannie,

In social glee,

Wi' mornings blythe and e'enings funny
Bless them and thee!

Fareweef, auld birkie! Lord be near ye,
And then the Deil he daur na steer ye:
Your friends ay love, your faes ay fear ye,
For me, shame fa' me,

If neist my heart I dinna wear ye

While BURNS they ca' me.

* Mr. Maxwell, of Terraughty, near Dumfries.

To a LADY,

With a present of a pair of Drinking Glasses.

FAIR Empress of the Poet's soul,
And Queen of Poetesses;
Clarinda, take this little boon,
This humble pair of glasses.-

And fill them high with generous juice,
As generous as your mind;
And pledge me in the generous toast
"The whole of human kind!"

To those who love us!"-second fill; But not to those whom we love; Lest we love those who love not us! A third" to thee and me, love!"

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

TRAGIC FRAGMENT.

IN my early years nothing less would serve me than courting the tragic Muse.-I was, I think, about eighteen or nineteen when I sketched the outlines of a tragedy forsooth; but the bursting of a cloud of family misfortunes, which had for some time threatened us, prevented my farther progress. In those days I never wrote down any thing; except a speech or two, the whole has escaped my memory.-The following, which I most distinctly remember, was an exclamation from a great character:-great in occasional instances of generosity, and daring at times in villainies. He is supposed to meet with a child of misery, and exclaims to himself

"All devil as I am, a damned wretch,

"A harden'd, stubborn, unrepenting villain,
"Still my heart melts at human wretchedness;
"And with sincere tho' unavailing sighs,

"I view the helpless children of distress.
"With tears indignant I behold th' oppressor

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Rejoicing in the honest man's destruction, "Whose unsubmitting heart was all his crime. "Even you, ye helpless crew, I pity you; "Ye, whom the seeming good think sin to pity: "Ye poor, despis'd, abandon'd vagabonds, "Whom vice, as usual, has turn'd o'er to ruin. O, but for kind, tho' ill-requited friends,

"I had been driven forth like you forlorn, "The most detested, worthless wretch among you!"

THE VOWELS-A TALE.

'Twas where the birch and sounding thong are ply'd,

The noisy domicile of pedant pride;

Where ignorance her darkening vapour throws,
And cruelty directs the thickening blows;
Upon a time, Sir Abece the great,
In all his pedagogic powers elate,

His awful chair of state resolves to mount,
And call the trembling vowels to account.

First enter'd A, grave, broad, solemn wight,
But ah deform'd, dishonest to the sight!
His twisted head look'd backward on his way,
And flagrant from the scourge he grunted, ai!
Reluctant, E stalk'd in; with piteous race
The justling tears ran down his honest face!
That name, that well-worn name, and all his own,
Pale he surrenders at the tyrant's throne!
The pedant stifles keen the Roman sound
Not all his mongrel diphthongs can compound;
And next the title following close behind,
He to the nameless, ghastly wretch assign'd.

The cobweb'd gothic dome resounded, Y!
In sullen vengeance, I, disdain'd reply:
The pedant swung his felon cudgel round,
And knock'd the groaning vowel to the ground!
In rueful apprehension enter'd O,
The wailing minstrel of despairing woe;
Th' Inquisitor of Spain the most expert,
Might there have learnt new misteries of his art
So grim, deform'd, with horrors entering U,
His dearest friend and brother scarcely knew!

As trembling U stood staring all aghast,
The pedant in his left hand clutch'd him fast,
In helpless infants' tears he dipp'd his right,
Baptiz'd him eu, and kick'd him from his sight.