Than I, no lonely hermit placed
Where never human footstep traced,
Less fit to play the part,
The lucky moment to improve,
And just to stop, and just to move,
With self-respecting art:
But ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys,
Which I too keenly taste,
The Solitary can despise,
Can want, and yet be blest!
He needs not, he heeds not,
Or human love or hate,
Whilst I here must cry here,
At perfidy ingrate!
Oh! enviable, early days,
When dancing, thoughtless, Pleasure's maze,
To care, to guilt unknown!
How ill exchanged for riper times,
To feel the follies, or the crimes,
Of others, or my own!
Ye tiny elves that guiltless sport,
Like linnets in the bush,
Ye little know the ills ye court,
When manhood is your wish;
The losses, the crosses,
That active man engage!
The fears all, the tears all,
Of dim-declining age!
THE wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or, the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.
"The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,"!
The joyless winter day,
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!
Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here, firm, I rest, they must be best,
Because they are Thy Will!
Then all I want (O, do Thou grant
This one request of mine!)
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign!
[Inscribed to JoHn Ballantyne, Esq., Ayr.]
THE simple Bard, rough at the rustic plough,
Learning his tuneful trade from every bough;
The chanting linnet, or the mellow thrush,
Hailing the setting sun, sweet, in the green thorn-bush;
The soaring lark, the perching redbreast shrill,
Or deep-toned plovers, grey, wild-whistling o'er the hill; Shall he, nurst in the peasant's lowly shed,
To hardy independence bravely bred,
By early Poverty to hardship steeled,
And trained to arms in stern Misfortune's field,
Shall he be guilty of their hireling crimes,
The servile, mercenary Swiss of rhymes?
Or labour hard the panegyric close,
With all the venal soul of dedicating prose?
No! though his artless strains he rudely sings,
And throws his hand uncouthly o'er the strings,
He glows with all the spirit of the Bard,
Fame, honest fame, his great, his dear reward.
Still, if some patron's generous care he trace,
Skilled in the secret, to bestow with grace;
When Ballantyne befriends his humble name,
And hands the rustic stranger up to fame,
With heartfelt throes his grateful bosom swells,
The God-like bliss, to give, alone excels.
'Twas when the stacks get on their winter hap,' And thack and rape secure the toil-won crap; 1 Covering.
Potato-bings' are snuggèd up fra skaith 2
Of coming Winter's biting, frosty breath;
The bees, rejoicing o'er their summer toils,
Unnumbered buds and flowers, delicious spoils,
Sealed up with frugal care in massive waxen piles,
Are doomed by man, that tyrant o'er the weak,
The death o' devils smoored3 wi' brimstone reek:
The thundering guns are heard on every side,
The wounded coveys, reeling, scatter wide;
The feathered field-mates, bound by Nature's tie,
Sires, mothers, children, in one carnage lie:
(What warm, poetic heart, but inly bleeds,
And execrates man's savage, ruthless deeds!)
Nae mair the flower in field or meadow springs:
Nae mair the grove with airy concert rings,
Except perhaps the Robin's whistling glee,
Proud of the height o' some bit half-lang tree:
The hoary morns precede the sunny days,
Mild, calm, serene, wide spreads the noontide blaze,
While thick the gossamour waves wanton in the rays.
'Twas in that season, when a simple Bard,
Unknown and poor-simplicity's reward-
Ae night, within the ancient brugh of Ayr,
By whim inspired, or haply prest with care;
He left his bed, and took his wayward route,
And down by Simpson's' wheeled the left about:
(Whether impelled by all-directing Fate,
To witness what I after shall narrate;
Or whether, rapt in meditation high,
He wandered out he knew not where nor why)
The drowsy Dungeon-clock had numbered two,
And Wallace Tower" had sworn the fact was true:
The tide-swoln Firth, with sullen sounding roar,
Through the still night dashed hoarse along the shore:
All else was hushed as Nature's closèd e'e;
The silent moon shone high o'er tower and tree;
The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam,
Crept, gently crusting o'er the glittering stream.
When lo! on either hand the list'ning Bard,
The clanging sugh of whistling wings is heard;
Two dusky forms dart through the midnight air,
Swift as the Gos drives on the wheeling hare;
Ane on th' Auld Brig his airy shape uprears,
The ither flutters o'er the rising piers:
A noted tavern at the Auld Brig end.
The gos-hawk, or falcon.
Our warlock Rhymer instantly descried
The sprites that owre the Brigs of Ayr preside.
(That bards are second-sighted is nae joke,
And ken the lingo of the spiritual folk;
Fays, spunkies, kelpies, a', they can explain them,
And ev❜n the very de'ils they brawly ken them.)
Auld Brig appeared of ancient Pictish race,
The very wrinkles Gothic in his face :
He seemed as he wi' Time had warstled lang,
Yet teughly doure, he bade an unco bang.1
New Brig was buskit in a braw new coat,
That he at Lon'on, frae ane Adams, got;
In's hand five taper staves as smooth's a bead,
With virls 2 and whirlygigums at the head.
The Goth was stalking round with anxious search,
Spying the time-worn flaws in every arch;
It chanced his new-come neebor took his e'e,
And e'en a vexed and angry heart had he!
Wi' thieveless3 sneer to see his modish mien,
He, down the water, gies him this guideen :-
I doubt na,' frien,' ye'll think ye 're nae sheepshank,*
Ance ye were streekit o'er frae bank to bank!
But gin ye be a brig as auld as me—
Though faith that day I doubt ye 'll never see;
There'll be, if that date come, I'll wad a boddle,"
Some fewer whigmeleeries in your noddle.
Auld Vandal, ye but show your little mense,7
Just much about it wi' your scanty sense;
Will your poor, narrow footpath of a street,
Where twa wheelbarrows tremble when they meet,
Your ruined, formless bulk, o' stane an' lime,
Compare wi' bonnie brigs o' modern time?
There's men o' taste would tak' the Ducat stream,8
Though they should caste the very sark and swim,
Ere they would grate their feelings wi' the view
Of sic an ugly, Gothic hulk as you.
Conceited gowk!"
This mony a year
puffed up wi' windy pride;
I've stood the flood and tide;
Toughly obdurate, he bore a mighty blow.
2 A ring round a column.
4 No worthless thing.
7 Manners.
3 Spiteful.
6 Bet a doit.
5 Stretched.
› A noted ford, just above the Auld Brig.
And though wi' crazy eild I'm sair forfairn,
I'll be a brig when ye 're a shapeless cairn!
As yet ye little ken about the matter,
But twa-three winters will inform ye better.
When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains,
Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil,
Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course,
Or haunted Garpal' draws his feeble source,
Aroused by blustering winds an' spotting thowes,
In mony a torrent down his sna-broo rowes;
While crashing ice, borne on the roaring speat,2
Sweeps dams, an' mills, an' brigs, a' to the gate;
And from Glenbuck, down to the Ratton-key,4
Auld Ayr is just one lengthened, tumbling sea;
Then down ye 'll hurl, de'il nor ye never rise!
And dash the gumlie jaups5 up to the pouring skies,
A lesson sadly teaching, to your cost,
That Architecture's noble art is lost!
Fine architecture, trowth, I needs must say't o't!
The Lord be thankit that we've tint the gate o't!
Gaunt, ghastly, ghaist-alluring edifices,
Hanging with threatening jut, like precipices;
O'er-arching, mouldy gloom-inspiring coves,
Supporting roofs fantastic, stony groves:
Windows and doors, in nameless sculpture drest,
With order, symmetry, or taste unblest;
Forms like some bedlam statuary's dream,
The crazed creations of misguided whim;
Forms might be worshipped on the bended knee,
And still the second dread command be free,
Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea.
Mansions that would disgrace the building taste
Of any mason, reptile, bird, or beast;
Fit only for a doited monkish race,
Or frosty maids forsworn the dear embrace,
Or cuifs 7 of latter times, wha held the notion
That sullen gloom was sterling true devotion;
Fancies that our guid brugh denies protection,
And soon may they expire, unblest with resurrection!
The banks of Garpal Water-one of the few places in the west of Scotland where those fancy-scaring beings, known by the name of ghaists, still continue pertinaciously to inhabit. -Burns.
A small landing-place above the large quay.
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