O Eighty-eight, in thy sma' space
What dire events hae taken place!
Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us!
In what a pickle thou hast left us!
The Spanish empire's tint1 a head,
And my auld teethless Bawtie's2 dead;
The tulzie's sair 'tween Pitt and Fox,
And our guidwife's wee birdie cocks;
The tane is game, a bluidy devil,
But to the hen-birds unco civil;
The tither's something dour o' treadin',
But better stuff ne'er clawed a midden.4
O Eighty-nine, thou's but a bairn,
And no owre auld, I hope, to learn!
Thou beardless boy, I pray tak' care,
Thou now hast got thy daddy's chair;
Nae handcuffed, muzzled, half-shackled Regent,
But, like himsel', a full, free agent,
Be sure ye follow out the plan
Nae waur than he did, honest man!
As muckle better as you can.
TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL, OF GLENRIDDEL.
EXTEMPORE LINES ON RETURNING A NEWSPAPER CONTAINING
CRITICISMS ON THE POET'S WORKS.
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 fabric complete,
I boldly 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!
Ellisland, Monday Evening.
TO JOHN TAYLOR.
WITH Pegasus upon a day,
Apollo weary flying,
Through frosty hills the journey lay,
On foot the way was plying.
Poor slipshod giddy Pegasus
Was but a sorry walker;
To Vulcan then Apollo goes,
To get a frosty caulker.1
Obliging Vulcan fell to work,
Threw by his coat and bonnet,
And did Sol's business in a crack:
Sol paid him with a sonnet.
Ye Vulcan's sons of Wanlockhead,
Pity my sad disaster;
My Pegasus is poorly shod-
I'll pay you like my master.
A nail put into a shoc to prevent the foot from slipping in frost weather.
[Inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox.]
How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite;
How virtue and vice blend their black and their white;
How genius, the illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction
I sing if these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
I care not, not I-let the critics go whistle!
But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory
At once may illustrate and honour my story.
Thou first of our orators, first of our wits;
Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits;
With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong,
No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong;
With passions so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite right;
A sorry, poor misbegot son of the Muses,
For using thy name offers fifty excuses.
Good Lord, what is man? for as simple he looks,
Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks;
With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil;
All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil.
On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours,
That, like the old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours ;
Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him?
Pull the string, ruling passion the picture will show him.
What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system,
One trifling particular truth should have missed him;
For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,
Mankind is a science defies definitions.
Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe,
And think human nature they truly describe;
Have you found this, or t'other? there's 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,
In the make of that wonderful creature called Man,
No two virtues, whatever relation they claim,
Nor even two different shades of the same,
Though like as was ever twin brother to brother,
Possessing the one shall imply you've the other.
But truce with abstraction, and truce with a Muse,
Whose rhymes you'll perhaps, sir, ne'er deign to peruse:
Will you leave your justings, your jars, and your quarrels,
Contending with Billy for proud-nodding laurels P
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;
Not cabinets even of kings would conceal '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!
ON SEEING A WOUNDED HARE LIMP BY ME,
WHICH A FELLOW HAD JUST SHOT AT.
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 field,
The bitter little that of life remains:
No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield.
Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest-
No more of rest, but now thy dying bed!
The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head,
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest.
Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,
I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.
"MR. PRINTER,-If the productions of a simple ploughman can merit a place in the same paper with 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., "ROBERT Burns.
Ellisland, near Dumfries, May 18, 1789."
FAIR the face of orient day,
Fair the tints of opening rose;
But fairer still my Delia dawns,
More lovely far her beauty blows.
ADDRESS TO THE TOOTHACHE.
Sweet the lark's wild-warbled lay,
Sweet the tinkling rill to hear;
But, Delia, more delightful still,
Steal thine accents on mine ear.
The flower-enamoured busy bee
The rosy banquet loves to sip;
Sweet the streamlet's limpid lapse
To the sun-browned Arab's lip.
But, Delia, on thy balmy lips
Let me, no vagrant insect, rove!
Oh, let me steal one liquid kiss!
For, oh! my soul is parched with love!
ADDRESS TO THE TOOTHACHE.
WRITTEN WHEN THE AUTHOR WAS GRIEVOUSLY TORMENTED BY THAT
DISORDER.
My curse upon thy venomed stang,
That shoots my tortured gums alang;
And through my lugs gi'es mony a twang,
Wi' gnawing vengeance;
Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang,
Like racking engines!
When fevers burn, or ague freezes,
Rheumatics gnaw, or cholic squeezes ;
Our neighbours' sympathy may ease us,
Wi' pitying moan;
But thee-thou hell o' a' diseases,
Aye mocks our groan!
Adown my beard the slavers trickle!
I kick the wee stools o'er the mickle,
As round the fire the giglets keckle,1
To see me loup;2
While, raving mad, I wish a heckle 3
Were in their doup.
Of a' the numerous human dools,*
Ill hairsts, daft bargains, cutty-stools,
Or worthy friends raked i' the mools,
Sad sight to see!
The tricks o' knaves, or fash o' fools,
Thou bear'st the gree."
1 The mirthful children laugh.
7 Thou art decidedly victor.
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