ON PASTORAL POETRY

How Xerxes, that abandoned Tory,
Thought cutting throats was reaping glory,
Until the stubborn Whigs of Sparta
Taught him great Nature's Magna Charta;
How mighty Rome her fiat hurl'd
Resistless o'er a bowing world,
And, kinder than they did desire,
Polish'd mankind with sword and fire;
With much, too tedious to relate,
Of ancient and of modern date,
But ending still, how Billy Pitt
(Unlucky boy!) with wicked wit,

Has gagg'd old Britain, drain'd her coffer,
As butchers bind and bleed a heifer.

Thus wily Reynard by degrees,
In kennel listening at his ease,
Suck'd in a mighty stock of knowledge,
As much as some folks at a College;
Knew Britain's rights and constitution,
Her aggrandisement, diminution,
How fortune wrought us good from evil;
Let no man, then, despise the Devil,
As who should say, 'I never can need him,'
Since we to scoundrels owe our freedom.

Poem on Pastoral Poetry.1

HAIL, Poesie! thou Nymph reserv'd!
In chase o' thee, what crowds hae swerv'd
Frae common sense, or sunk enerv'd

'Mang heaps o' clavers":
And och o'er aft thy joes hae starv'd,
'Mid a' thy favours!

a nonsense.

1 The authorship of this has been doubted, but it was found among

b sweethearts.

Burns's papers in his own hand. writing, and may well be his.

ON PASTORAL POETRY

Say, Lassie, why thy train amang,
While loud the trump's heroic clang,
And sock or buskin skelp alang

To death or marriage;

Scarce ane has tried the shepherd-sang
But wi' miscarriage?

In Homer's craft Jock Milton thrives;
Eschylus' pen Will Shakespeare drives;
Wee Pope, the knurlin, till him rives
Horatian fame;

In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives
Even Sappho's flame.

But thee, Theocritus, wha matches?
They're no herd's ballats, Maro's catches;
Squire Pope but busks his skinklin patches
O' heathen tatters:

с

I pass by hunders, nameless wretches,
That ape their betters.

In this braw age o' wit and lear,d
Will nane the Shepherd's whistle mair
Blaw sweetly in its native air,

And rural grace;

And, wi' the far-fam'd Grecian, share
A rival place?

Yes! there is ane; a Scottish callan!
There's ane; come forrit,' honest Allan!
Thou need na jouk behint the hallan,h
A chiel sae clever;

The teeth o' time may gnaw Tantallan,1
But thou's for ever.

Thou paints auld Nature to the nines,1
In thy sweet Caledonian lines;

1 The rocky stronghold of that name in East Lothian.

DRUMLANRIG WOODS

Nae gowden stream thro' myrtle twines,
Where Philomel,

While nightly breezes sweep the vines,
Her griefs will tell!

In gowany glens thy burnie strays,
Where bonie lasses bleach their claes,
Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes,
Wi' hawthorns gray,

Where blackbirds join the shepherd's lays,
At close o' day.

Thy rural loves are Nature's sel';

Nae bombast spates o' nonsense swell;
Nae snapd conceits, but that sweet spell
O' witchin love,

That charm that can the strongest quell,
The sternest move.

Verses on the Destruction of the Woods near Drumlanrig.1

As on the banks of winding Nith,
Ae smiling simmer morn I stray'd,
And traced its bonie holms and haughs,
Where linties sang and lammies play'd,
I sat me down upon a craig,

And drank my fill o' fancy's dream,
When from the eddying deep below,
Up rose the genius of the stream.

Dark, like the frowning rock, his brow,
And troubled, like his wintry wave,
And deep, as sughs the boding wind
Amang his caves, the sigh he gave-

■ daisied.

b groves. 1 Whoever wrote the poem (Scots Magazine, Feb. 1803) shared the views of Wordsworth about the "degenerate Douglas," "Old Q," the Ďuke of

• floods. 4 smart. Queensberry, best known to many as the Lord March, beaten by Harry Warrington in a leaping mateh, in Thackeray's Virginians.

DRUMLANRIG WOODS

"And come ye here, my son," he cried,
"To wander in my birken shade?
To muse some favourite Scottish theme,
Or sing some favourite Scottish maid?

"There was a time, it's nae lang syne,
Ye might hae seen me in my pride,
When a' my banks sae bravely saw
Their woody pictures in my tide;
When hanging beech and spreading elm
Shaded my stream sae clear and cool:
And stately oaks their twisted arms

Threw broad and dark across the pool;

"When, glinting thro' the trees, appear'd
The wee white cot aboon the mill,
And peacefu' rose its ingle reek,

That, slowly curling, clamb the hill.
But now the cot is bare and cauld,
Its leafy bield for ever gane,
And scarce a stinted birk is left
To shiver in the blast its lane."

"Alas!" quoth I, "what ruefu' chance Has twin'd ye o' your stately trees? Has laid your rocky bosom bare

Has stripped the cleeding aff your braes?

Was it the bitter eastern blast,

That scatters blight in early spring? Or was 't the wil'fire scorch'd their boughs, Or canker-worm wi' secret sting?"

"Nae eastlin blast," the sprite replied; "It blaws na here sae fierce and fell, And on my dry and halesome banks

Nae canker-worms get leave to dwell: Man! cruel man!" the genius sighedAs through the cliffs he sank him down"The worm that gnaw'd my bonie trees, That reptile wears a Ducal crown."

THE GALLANT WEAVER

The Gallant Weaver.1

WHERE Cart rins rowin to the sea,
By mony a flower and spreading tree,
There lives a lad, the lad for me,
He is a gallant Weaver.

O, I had wooers aught or nine,
They gied me rings and ribbons fine;
And I was fear'd my heart wad tine,*
And I gied it to the Weaver.

My daddie sign'd my tocher-band,
To gie the lad that has the land,
But to my heart I'll add my hand,
And give it to the Weaver.

While birds rejoice in leafy bowers,
While bees delight in opening flowers,
While corn grows green in summer showers,
I love my gallant Weaver.

Epigram at Brownhill Inn.2

AT Brownhill we always get dainty good cheer,
And plenty of bacon each day in the year;
We've a' thing that's nice, and mostly in season,
But why always Bacon-come tell me the reason?

You're welcome, Willie Stewart.3
Chorus.-You're welcome, Willie Stewart,

You're welcome, Willie Stewart,
There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May,
That's half sae welcome's thou art!

465

b marriage settlement.

Bacon was the name of a presumably intrusive host. The lines are said to have "afforded much amusement."

3 Lincs written on a tumbler, now at Abbotsford. The original is the Jacobite "You're welcome, Charlie Stuart.'