A NEW PSALM My kindest, best respects, I sen' it, But to grant a maidenhead's the devil. May guardian angels tak a spell, Now fare ye weel, an' joy be wi' you: Sae I conclude, and quat my chanter,d ROB THE RANTER. A New Psalm for the Chapel Kilmarnock, of On the Thanksgiving-Day for His Majesty's Recovery.1 ⚫ perhaps. O SING a new song to the Lord, A joyful noise, even for the king The sons of Belial in the land Did set their heads together; Come, let us sweep them off, said they, b troublesome. 1 As George III. was recovering from insanity, Burns wrote this example of A NEW PSALM They set their heads together, I say, Thou madest strong two chosen ones And him, among the Princes, chief The judge that's mighty in thy law, Yet they, even they, with all their strength, Even as two howling, ravenous wolves Th' ungodly o'er the just prevail'd, That thou might'st greater glory give And now thou hast restored our State, For she by tribulations Is now brought very low. Consume that high-place, Patronage, And in thy fury burn the book- 1 Dr William M'Gill of Ayr, whose Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ led to a charge of heresy against him. Burns took up his cause in The Kirk of Scotland's Alarm (p. 393). SKETCH IN VERSE Now hear our prayer, accept our song, Sketch in Verse. Inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox.1 How Wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite, But now for a Patron whose name and whose glory, Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem just lucky hits; Good L-d, what is Man! for as simple he looks, On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours, That, like th' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours: 1 Probably intended for The Star, a London evening paper, to which, or to whose Editor, Burns had written a THE WOUNDED HARE Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him? One trifling particular, Truth, should have miss'd him; Mankind is a science defies definitions. Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, Have you found this, or t'other? There's more in the wind; In the make of that wonderful creature called Man, But truce with abstraction, and truce with a Muse The Wounded Hare.2 INHUMAN man! curse on thy barb'rous art, 1 These twelve lines first appeared in the Aldine edition of 1839; the rest was printed by Currie. 2 Burns explains the occasion in a letter to Alex. Cunningham. (May 4, 1789). Dr Gregory severely criticised the poem in its original form, DELIA, AN ODE Go live, poor wand'rer of the wood and field! No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest, Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its woe; Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn, And curse the ruffian's arm, and mourn thy hapless fate. Delia, an Ode. "To the Editor of The Star.-Mr Printer-If the productions of a simple ploughman can merit a place in the same paper with Sylvester Otway, and the other favourites of the Muses who illuminate the Star with the lustre of genius, your insertion of the enclosed trifle will be succeeded by future communications from-Yours, &c., R. BURNS. Ellisland, near Dumfries, 18th May, 1789." FAIR the face of orient day, Fair the tints of op'ning rose; 1 This verse originally ran :- That wonted form, alas! thy dying bed, The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head, The cold earth with thy blood-stain'd bosom warm. 2 Omitted by Burns when he printed the piece. The lines, if authentic, are obviously a parody. |