Ae fond kiss

Amang the trees.

The Tailor

Blooming Nelly

My Jean

My Harry was a gallant gay

I'll aye ca' in by yon town

The gowden locks of Anna

The Exciseman

O for ane and twenty, Tam

Country lassie

Bess and her spinning wheel

She's fair and fause.

Weary fa' you, Duncan Gray

Willie brew'd a peck o' maut

Up in the morning early

A bottle and an honest friend

Caledonia

My Hoggie

How can I be blithe and glad

POEMS.

EPISTLE TO HUGH PARKER.*

In this strange land, this uncouth clime,
A land unknown to prose or rhyme;
Where words ne'er crost the muse's heckles,
Nor limpet in poetic shackles ;

A land that prose did never view it,
Except when drunk he stacher't through it;
Here, ambush'd by the chimla cheek,
Hid in an atmosphere of reek,

I hear a wheel thrum i' the neuk,

I hear it-for in vain I leuk.
The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel,
Enhusked by a fog infernal :
Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures,
I sit and count my sins by chapters;
For life and spunk like ither Christians,
I'm dwindled down to mere existence,
Wi' nae converse but Gallowa' bodies,
Wi' nae kend face but Jenny Geddes.
Jenny, my Pegasean pride!
Dowie she saunters down Nithside,

And aye a westlin leuk she throws,

While tears hap o'er her auld brown nose!

* This epistle is dated June, 1788, and is addressed to Mr Hugh Parker, Merchant, Kilmarnock, one of Burns' earliest friends and patrons. It is honourable to the memory of Mr Parker, that he subscribed for thirty copies of the poet's works when he first brought them out at the Kilmarnock press.-M.

2

Was it for this, wi' canny care,

Thou bure the Bard through many a shire?
At howes or hillocks never stumbled,
And late or early never grumbled ?—
O had I power like inclination,
I'd heeze thee up a constellation,
To canter with the Sagitarre,
Or loup the ecliptic like a bar;
Or turn the pole like any arrow;
Or, when auld Phoebus bids good-morrow,
Down the zodiac urge the race,
And cast dirt on his godship's face;
For I could lay my bread and kail
He'd ne'er cast saut upo' thy tail.—
Wi' a' this care and a' this grief,
And sma', sma' prospect of relief,
And nought but peat reek i' my head,
How can I write what ye can read?
Tarbolton, twenty-fourth o' June,
Ye'll find me in a better tune;

But till we meet and weet our whistle,

Tak this excuse for nae epistle.

ROBERT BURNS.

THE GUIDWIFE OF WAUCHOPE-HOUSE,*

TO ROBERT BURNS.

February, 1787.

My canty, witty, rhyming ploughman,

I hafllins doubt, it is na true, man,

That ye between the stilts were bred,

Wi' ploughmen school'd, wi' ploughmen fed.

*The guidwife of Wauchope-house was the late talented Mrs Scott of Wauchope.-M.