Heaven spare you lang to kiss the breath And bless your bonnie lasses baith, And God bless young Dunaskin's laird, And may he wear an auld man's beard To CAPTAIN RIDDLE, Glenriddel. (Extempore Lines on returning a Newspaper.) Ellisland, Monday Evening. 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 fabrick complete, My goose-quill too rude is to tell 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! VOL. XXXIX. K To TERRAUGHTY,* on his Birth-Day, HEALTH to the Maxwells' vet'ran chief! I see thy life is stuff o' prief, Scarce quite half worn. This day thou metes threescore eleven, On thee a tack o' seven times seven If envious buckies view wi' sorrow Nine miles an hour, Rake them, like Sodom and Gomorrah, But for thy friends, and they are mony, Wi' mornings blithe and e'enings funny Bless them and thee! * Mr. Maxwell, of Terraughty, near Dumfries. Fareweel, auld birkie! Lord be near ye, If neist my heart I dinna wear ye While Burns they ca' me. To A LADY, With a Present of a Pair of Drinking Glasses. FAIR Empress of the Poet's soul, And Queen of Poetesses; Clarinda, take this little boon, This humble pair of glasses. And fill them high with generous juice, And pledge me in the generous toast- To those who love us !'-second fill; But not to those whom we love; Lest we love those who love not us!A third- to thee and me, love! THE VOWELS,-A Tale. 'Twas where the birch and sounding thong are His awful chair of state resolves to mount, First enter'd A, a grave, broad, solemn wight, But, ah! deform'd, dishonest to the sight! His twisted head look'd backward on his way, And flagrant from the scourge, he grunted ai! Reluctant E stalk'd in; with piteous grace The justling tears ran down his honest face! That name, that well-worn name, and all his own, Pale he surrenders at the tyrant's throne! The pedant stifles keen the Roman sound Not all his mongrel diphthongs can compound; And next the title following close behind, He to the nameless, ghastly wretch assign'd. The cobweb'd gothic dome resounded Y! In sullen vengeance, I, disdain'd, reply: The pedant swung his felon cudgel round, And knock'd the groaning vowel to the ground! In rueful apprehension enter'd O, The wailing minstrel of despairing woe; The' Inquisitor of Spain the most expert, Might there have learnt new mysteries of his art: So grim, deform'd, with horrors entering U, SKETCH.* A LITTLE, upright, pert, tart, tripping wight, *This sketch seems to be one of a Series, intended for a projected work, under the title of The Poet's Progress,' This character was sent as a specimen, accompanied by a letter to Professor Dugald Stewart, in which it is thus noticed. The fragment beginning, A little, upright, pert, tart, &c. I have not shown to any man living, till I now send it to you. It forms the postulata, the axioms, the definition of a character, which, if it appear at all, shall be placed in a variety of lights. This particu lar part I send you merely as a sample of my hand at portrait sketching,' |