- further on through the wildest hills and moors of Ayrshire to the next inn! The powers of poetry and prose sink under me when I would describe what I felt. Suffice it to say, that when a good fire at New Cumnock had so far recovered my frozen sinews, I sat down and wrote the enclosed ode." DWELLER in yon dungeon dark, STROPHE. View the withered beldam's face Aught of humanity's sweet melting grace? Pity's flood there never rose. See these hands, ne'er stretched to save, Hands that took - but never gave. Keeper of Mammon's iron chest, Lo! there she goes, unpitied and unblest ANTISTROPHE. Plunderer of armies, lift thine eyes (A while forbear, ye tort'ring fiends); Seest thou whose step, unwilling, hither bends? No fallen angel, hurled from upper skies; She, tardy, hellward plies. EPODE. And are they of no more avail, O bitter mockery of the pompous bier, TO JOHN TAYLOR. Burns had arrived at Wanlockhead on a winter day, when the roads were slippery with ice, and the blacksmith of the place, busied with other pressing matters in the forge, could not spare time for frosting the shoes of the poet's mare. Burns called for pen and ink, and wrote these verses to John Taylor, a person of influence in Wanlockhead, on the receipt of which, Taylor spoke to the smith, and the smith flew to his tools, and sharpened the horse's shoes. WITH Pegasus upon a day, Apollo weary flying, (Through frosty hills the journey lay,) Poor slipshod giddy Pegasus Obliging Vulcan fell to work, Threw by his coat and bonnet, And did Sol's business in a crack; Ye Vulcan's sons of Wanlockhead, My Pegasus is poorly shod - RAMAGE'S, 3 o'clock. SKETCH: INSCRIBED TO CHARLES JAMES 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 Contradic tion 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, [Good L-d, 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. 1 The verses following within brackets were added afterwards. On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours, That, like th' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours: Mankind are his show-box · you know him? a friend, would Pull the string, ruling passion the picture will shew him. What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, Truth, should have missed him; For, spite of his fine theoretic positions, 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.1 1 The verses following this line were first printed from a manuscript of Burns, in Pickering's edition. |