AFTER MEAT.

O THOU, in whom we live and move,
Who mad'st the sea and shore,
Thy goodness constantly we prove,
And grateful would adore.

And if it please thee, pow'r above,
Still grant us with such store,

The friend we trust, the fair we love;
And we desire no more.

A GRACE,

SPOKEN AT THE TABLE OF THE EARL OF SELKIRK.

SOME hae meat that canna eat,

And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,

Sae let the Lord be thankit.

EPIGRAMS.

EPIGRAM ON A HENPECKED COUNTRY SQUIRE.

O DEATH, hadst thou but spar'd his life
Whom we, this day, lament!
We freely wad exchang'd the Wife,
And a' been weel content.

Ev'n as he is, cauld in his graff,
The swap we yet will do't;
Tak thou the carlin's carcase aff,
Thou'se get the saul to boot.

ANOTHER.

ONE Queen Artemisa, as old stories tell,

When deprived of her husband she loved so well,
In respect for the love and affection he'd shown her,
She reduc'd him to dust, and she drank off the powder.

But Queen Netherplace, of a different complexion,
When call'd on to order the fun'ral direction,
Would have eat her dead lord, on a slender pretence,
Not to show her respect, but-to save the expense.

EPIGRAM ON CAPT. FRANCIS GROSE,

THE CELEBRATED ANTIQUARY.*

THE Devil got notice that GROSE was a-dying,
So whip! at the summons, old Satan came flying;
But when he approach'd where poor FRANCIS lay moaning,
And saw each bed-post with its burden a-groaning,†
Astonish'd confounded! cry'd Satan, "By
"I'll want 'im, ere I take such a damnable load."

EPIGRAM

ON ELPHINSTONE'S TRANSLATION OF MARTIAL'S EPIGRAMS.

O THOU Whom Poetry abhors,

Whom Prose has turned out of doors,

Heard'st thou that groan-proceed no further,

'Twas laurell'd Martial roaring murder.

ON MISS J. SCOTT,

OF AYR.

OH! had each Scor of ancient times,
Been JEANY SCOTT, as thou art;
The bravest heart on English ground,
Had yielded like a coward.

*The above epigram, written in a moment of festivity by Burns, was so much relished by Grose, that he made it serve as an excuse for prolonging the convivial occasion that gave it birth to a very late hour.

† Mr Grose was exceedingly corpulent, and used to rally himself, with the greatest good humour, on the singular rotundity of his figure.

EPIGRAM.*

WHOE'ER he be that sojourns here,
I pity much his case,
Unless he come to wait upon

The Lord their God, his Grace.

There's naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger;
If Providence has sent me here,
'Twas surely in his anger.

EPIGRAM ON ANDREW TURNER.

IN seventeen hunder forty-nine

Satan took stuff to mak a swine,
And cuist it in a corner;
But wilily he changed his plan,

And shaped it something like a man,

And ca'd it Andrew Turner.

⚫ Burns, accompanied by a friend, having gone to Inverary at a time when some company were there on a visit to his Grace the Duke of Argyll, finding himself and his companion entirely neglected by the Inn-keeper, whose whole attention seemed to be occupied with the visitors of his Grace, expressed his disapprobation of the incivility with which they were treated in the above lines.

H 3

EPITAPHS.

ON A CELEBRATED RULING ELDER.

HERE Souter John in death does sleep;
To hell, if he's gane thither,
Satan, gie him thy gear to keep,
He'll haud it weel thegither.

ON A NOISY POLEMIC.

BELOW thir stanes lie Jamie's banes :
O Death, it's my opinion,
Thou ne'er took such a blethrin' bitch
Into thy dark dominion!

FOR THE AUTHOR'S FATHER.

O YE whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious rev'rence and attend;
Here lie the loving husband's dear remains,
The tender father, and the gen'rous friend.

The pitying heart that felt for human wo;

The dauntless heart that fear'd no human pride;

The friend of man, to vice alone a foe;

"For ev❜n his failings lean'd to virtue's side."*

* Goldsmith.