But from the day of his departure from "the barren" Ellisland, the downward course of Burns may be dated. The cold neglect of his country had driven him back indignantly to the plough, and he hoped to gain from the furrowed field that independence which it was the duty of Scotland to have provided: but he did not resume the plough with all the advantages he possessed when he first forsook it: he had revelled in the luxuries of polished life—his tastes had been rendered expensive as well as pure: he had witnessed, and he hoped for the pleasures of literary retirement, while the hands which had led jewelled dames over scented carpets to supper tables leaded with silver took hold of the hilts of the plough with more of reluctance than good-will. Edinburgh, with its lords and its ladies, its delights and its hopes, spoiled him for farming. Nor were his new labours more acceptable to his haughty spirit than those of the plough: the excise for a century had been a word of opprobrium or of hatred in the north: the duties which it imposed were regarded, not by peasants alone, as a serious encroachment upon the ancient rights of the nation, and to mislead a gauger, or resist him, even to blood, was considered by few as a fault. That the brightest genius of the nation—one whose tastes and sensibilities were so peculiarly its own—should be, as a reward, set to look after run-rum and smuggled tobacco, and to gauge ale-wife's barrels, was a regret and a marvel to many, and a source of bitter merriment to Burns himself.

The duties of his situation were however performed punctually, if not with pleasure: he was a vigilant officer; he was also a merciful and considerate one: though loving a joke, and not at all averse to a dram, he walked among suspicious brewers, captious ale-wives, and frowning shop-keepers as uprightly as courteously: he smoothed the ruggedest natures into acquiescence by his gayety and humour, and yet never gave cause for a malicious remark, by allowing his vigilance to slumber. He was brave, too, and in the capture of an armed smuggler, in which he led the attack, showed that he neither feared water nor fire: he loved, also, to counsel the more forward of the smugglers to abandon their dangerous calling; his sympathy for the helpless poor induced him to give them now and then notice of his approach; he has been known to interpret the severe laws of the excise into tenderness and mercy in behalf of the widow and the fatherless. In all this he did but his duty to his country and his kind: and his conduct was so regarded by a very competent and candid judge. "Let me look at the books of Burns," said Maxwell, of Terraughty, at the meeting of the district magistrates, "for they show that an upright officer may be a merciful one." With a salary of some seventy pounds a year, the chance of a few guineas annually from the future editions of his poems, and the hope of rising at some distant day to the more lucrative situation of supervisor, Burns continued to live in Dumfries; first in the Bank-vennel, and next in a small house in a humble street, since called by his name.

In his earlier years the poet seems to have scattered songs as thick as a summer eve scatters its dews; nor did he scatter them less carelessly: he appears, indeed, to have thought much less of them than of his poems: the sweet song of Mary Morison, and others not at all inferior, lay unregarded among his papers till accident called them out to shine and be admired. Many of these brief but happy compositions, sometimes with his name, and oftener without, he threw in dozens at a time into Johnson, where they were noticed only by the captious Ritson: but now a work of higher pretence claimed a share in his skill: in September, 1792, he was requested by George Thomson to render, for his national collection, the poetry worthy of the muses of the north, and to take compassion on many choice airs, which had waited for a poet like the author of the Cotter's Saturday Night, to wed them to immortal verse. To engage in such an undertaking, Burns required small persuasion, and while Thomson asked for strains delicate and polished, the poet characteristically stipulated that his contributions were to be without remuneration, and the language seasoned with a sprinkling of the Scottish dialect. As his heart was much in the matter, he began to pour out verse with a readiness and talent unknown in the history of song: his engagement with Thomson, and his esteem for Johnson, gave birth to a series of songs as brilliant as varied, and as naturally easy as they were gracefully original. In looking over those very dissimilar collections it is not difficult to discover that the songs which he wrote for the more stately work, while they are more polished and elegant than those which he contributed to the less pretending one, are at the same time less happy in their humour and less simple in their pathos. "What pleases me as simple and naive," says Burns to Thomson, "disgusts you as ludicrous and low. For this reason 'Fye, gie me my coggie, sirs,' 'Fye, let us a' to the bridal,' with several others of that cast, are to me highly pleasing, while 'Saw ye my Father' delights me with its descriptive simple pathos:" we read in these words the reasons of the difference between the lyrics of the two collections.

The land where the poet lived furnished ready materials for song: hills with fine woods, vales with clear waters, and dames as lovely as any recorded in verse, were to be had in his walks and his visits; while, for the purposes of mirth or of humour, characters, in whose faces originality was legibly written, were as numerous in Nithsdale as he had found them in the west. He had been reproached, while in Kyle, with seeing charms in very ordinary looks, and hanging the garlands of the muse on unlovely altars; he was liable to no such censure in Nithsdale; he poured out the incense of poetry only on the fair and captivating: his Jeans, his Lucys, his Phillises, and his Jessies were ladies of such mental or personal charms as the Reynolds's and the Lawrences of the time would have rejoiced to lay out their choicest colours on. But he did not limit himself to the charms of those whom he could step out to the walks and admire: his lyrics give evidence of the wandering of his thoughts to the distant or the dead—he loves to remember Charlotte Hamilton and Mary Campbell, and think of the sighs and vows on the Devon and the Doon, while his harpstrings were still quivering to the names of the Millers and the M'Murdos—to the charms of the lasses with golden or with flaxen locks, in the valley where he dwelt. Of Jean M'Murdo and her sister Phillis he loved to sing; and their beauty merited his strains: to one who died in her bloom, Lucy Johnston, he addressed a song of great sweetness; to Jessie Lewars, two or three songs of gratitude and praise: nor did he forget other beauties, for the accomplished Mrs. Riddel is remembered, and the absence of fair Clarinda is lamented in strains both impassioned and pathetic.

But the main inspirer of the latter songs of Burns was a young woman of humble birth: of a form equal to the most exquisite proportions of sculpture, with bloom on her cheeks, and merriment in her large bright eyes, enough to drive an amatory poet crazy. Her name was Jean Lorimer; she was not more than seventeen when the poet made her acquaintance, and though she had got a sort of brevet-right from an officer of the army, to use his southron name of Whelpdale, she loved best to be addressed by her maiden designation, while the poet chose to veil her in the numerous lyrics, to which she gave life, under the names of "Chloris," "The lass of Craigie-burnwood," and "The lassie wi' the lintwhite locks." Though of a temper not much inclined to conceal anything, Burns complied so tastefully with the growing demand of the age for the exterior decencies of life, that when the scrupling dames of Caledonia sung a new song in her praise, they were as unconscious whence its beauties came, as is the lover of art, that the shape and gracefulness of the marble nymph which he admires, are derived from a creature who sells the use of her charms indifferently to sculpture or to love. Fine poetry, like other arts called fine, springs from "strange places," as the flower in the fable said, when it bloomed on the dunghill; nor is Burns more to be blamed than was Raphael, who painted Madonnas, and Magdalens with dishevelled hair and lifted eyes, from a loose lady, whom the pope, "Holy at Rome—here Antichrist," charitably prescribed to the artist, while he laboured in the cause of the church. Of the poetic use which he made of Jean Lorimer's charms, Burns gives this account to Thomson. "The lady of whom the song of Craigie-burnwood was made is one of the finest women in Scotland, and in fact is to me in a manner what Sterne's Eliza was to him—a mistress, or friend, or what you will, in the guileless simplicity of platonic love. I assure you that to my lovely friend you are indebted for many of my best songs. Do you think that the sober gin-horse routine of my existence could inspire a man with life and love and joy—could fire him with enthusiasm, or melt him with pathos, equal to the genius of your book? No! no! Whenever I want to be more than ordinary in song—to be in some degree equal to your diviner airs—do you imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emanation? Quite the contrary. I have a glorious recipe; the very one that for his own use was invented by the divinity of healing and poesy, when erst he piped to the flocks of Admetus. I put myself in a regimen of admiring a fine woman; and in proportion to the adorability of her charms, in proportion are you delighted with my verses. The lightning of her eye is the godhead of Parnassus, and the witchery of her smile, the divinity of Helicon."

Most of the songs which he composed under the influences to which I have alluded are of the first order: "Bonnie Lesley," "Highland Mary," "Auld Rob Morris," "Duncan Gray," "Wandering Willie," "Meg o' the Mill," "The poor and honest sodger," "Bonnie Jean," "Phillis the fair," "John Anderson my Jo," "Had I a cave on some wild distant shore," "Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad," "Bruce's Address to his men at Bannockburn," "Auld Lang Syne," "Thine am I, my faithful fair," "Wilt thou be my dearie," "O Chloris, mark how green the groves," "Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair," "Their groves of sweet myrtle," "Last May a braw wooer came down the long glen," "O Mally's meek, Mally's sweet," "Hey for a lass wi' a tocher," "Here's a health to ane I loe dear," and the "Fairest maid on Devon banks." Many of the latter lyrics of Burns were more or less altered, to put them into better harmony with the airs, and I am not the only one who has wondered that a bard so impetuous and intractable in most matters, should have become so soft and pliable, as to make changes which too often sacrificed the poetry for the sake of a fuller and more swelling sound. It is true that the emphatic notes of the music must find their echo in the emphatic words of the verse, and that words soft and liquid are fitter for ladies' lips, than words hissing and rough; but it is also true that in changing a harsher word for one more harmonious the sense often suffers, and that happiness of expression, and that dance of words which lyric verse requires, lose much of their life and vigour. The poet's favourite walk in composing his songs was on a beautiful green sward on the northern side of the Nith, opposite Lincluden: and his favourite posture for composition at home was balancing himself on the hind legs of his arm-chair.

While indulging in these lyrical nights, politics penetrated into Nithsdale, and disturbed the tranquillity of that secluded region. First, there came a contest far the representation of the Dumfries district of boroughs, between Patrick Miller, younger, of Dalswinton, and Sir James Johnstone, of Westerhall, and some two years afterwards, a struggle for the representation of the county of Kirkcudbright, between the interest of the Stewarts, of Galloway, and Patrick Heron, of Kerroughtree. In the first of these the poet mingled discretion with his mirth, and raised a hearty laugh, in which both parties joined; for this sobriety of temper, good reasons may be assigned: Miller, the elder, of Dalswinton, had desired to oblige him in the affair of Ellisland, and his firm and considerate friend, M'Murdo, of Drumlanrig, was chamberlain to his Grace of Queensbury, on whoso interest Miller stood. On the other hand, his old Jacobitical affections made him the secret well-wisher to Westerhall, for up to this time, at least till acid disappointment and the democratic doctrine of the natural equality of man influenced him, Burns, or as a western rhymer of his day and district worded the reproach—Rob was a Tory. His situation, it will therefore be observed, disposed him to moderation, and accounts for the milkiness of his Epistle to Fintray, in which he marshals the chiefs of the contending factions, and foretells the fierceness of the strife, without pretending to foresee the event. Neither is he more explicit, though infinitely more humorous, in his ballad of "The Five Carlins," in which he impersonates the five boroughs—Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Lochmaben, Sanquhar, and Annan, and draws their characters as shrewd and calculating dames, met in much wrath and drink to choose a representative.

But the two or three years which elapsed between the election for the boroughs, and that for the county adjoining, wrought a serious change in the temper as well as the opinions of the poet. His Jacobitism, as has been said was of a poetic kind, and put on but in obedience to old feelings, and made no part of the man: he was in his heart as democratic as the kirk of Scotland, which educated him—he acknowledged no other superiority but the mental: "he was disposed, too," said Professor Walker, "from constitutional temper, from education and the accidents of life, to a jealousy of power, and a keen hostility against every system which enabled birth and opulence to anticipate those rewards which he conceived to belong to genius and virtue." When we add to this, a resentment of the injurious treatment of the dispensers of public patronage, who had neglected his claims, and showered pensions and places on men unworthy of being named with him, we have assigned causes for the change of side and the tone of asperity and bitterness infused into "The Heron Ballads." Formerly honey was mixed with his gall: a little praise sweetened his censure: in these election lampoons he is fierce and even venomous:—no man has a head but what is empty, nor a heart that is not black: men descended without reproach from lines of heroes are stigmatized as cowards, and the honest and conscientious are reproached as miserly, mean, and dishonourable. Such is the spirit of party. "I have privately," thus writes the poet to Heron, "printed a good many copies of the ballads, and have sent them among friends about the country. You have already, as your auxiliary, the sober detestation of mankind on the heads of your opponents; find I swear by the lyre of Thalia, to muster on your side all the votaries of honest laughter and fair, candid ridicule." The ridicule was uncandid, and the laughter dishonest. The poet was unfortunate in his political attachments: Miller gained the boroughs which Burns wished he might lose, and Heron lost the county which he foretold he would gain. It must also be recorded against the good taste of the poet, that he loved to recite "The Heron Ballads," and reckon them among his happiest compositions.

From attacking others, the poet was—in the interval between penning these election lampoons—called on to defend himself: for this he seems to have been quite unprepared, though in those yeasty times he might have expected it. "I have been surprised, confounded, and distracted," he thus writes to Graham, of Fintray, "by Mr. Mitchell, the collector, telling me that he has received an order from your board to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person disaffected to government. Sir, you are a husband and a father: you know what you would feel, to see the much-loved wife of your bosom, and your helpless prattling little ones, turned adrift into the world, degraded and disgraced, from a situation in which they had been respectable and respected. I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be than those I have mentioned, hung over my head, and I say that the allegation, whatever villain has made it, is a lie! To the British constitution, on Revolution principles, next after my God, I am devotedly attached. To your patronage as a man of some genius, you have allowed me a claim; and your esteem as an honest man I know is my due. To these, sir, permit me to appeal: by these I adjure you to save me from that misery which threatens to overwhelm me, and which with my latest breath I will say I have not deserved." In this letter, another, intended for the eye of the Commissioners of the Board of Excise, was enclosed, in which he disclaimed entertaining the idea of a British republic—a wild dream of the day—but stood by the principles of the constitution of 1688, with the wish to see such corruptions as had crept in, amended. This last remark, it appears, by a letter from the poet to Captain Erskine, afterwards Earl of Mar, gave great offence, for Corbet, one of the superiors, was desired to inform him, "that his business was to act, and not to think; and that whatever might be men or measures, it was his duty to be silent and obedient." The intercession of Fintray, and the explanations of Burns, were so far effectual, that his political offense was forgiven, "only I understand," said he, "that all hopes of my getting officially forward are blasted." The records of the Excise Office exhibit no trace of this memorable matter, and two noblemen, who were then in the government, have assured me that this harsh proceeding received no countenance at head-quarters, and must have originated with some ungenerous or malicious person, on whom the poet had spilt a little of the nitric acid of his wrath.

That Burns was numbered among the republicans of Dumfries I well remember: but then those who held different sentiments from the men in power, were all, in that loyal town, stigmatized as democrats: that he either desired to see the constitution changed, or his country invaded by the liberal French, who proposed to set us free with the bayonet, and then admit us to the "fraternal embrace," no one ever believed. It is true that he spoke of premiers and peers with contempt; that he hesitated to take off his hat in the theatre, to the air of "God save the king;" that he refused to drink the health of Pitt, saying he preferred that of Washington—a far greater man; that he wrote bitter words against that combination of princes, who desired to put down freedom in France; that he said the titled spurred and the wealthy switched England and Scotland like two hack-horses; and that all the high places of the land, instead of being filled by genius and talent, were occupied, as were the high-places of Israel, with idols of wood or of stone. But all this and more had been done and said before by thousands in this land, whose love of their country was never questioned. That it was bad taste to refuse to remove his hat when other heads were bared, and little better to refuse to pledge in company the name of Pitt, because he preferred Washington, cannot admit of a doubt; but that he deserved to be written down traitor, for mere matters of whim or caprice, or to be turned out of the unenvied situation of "gauging auld wives' barrels," because he thought there were some stains on the white robe of the constitution, seems a sort of tyranny new in the history of oppression. His love of country is recorded in too many undying lines to admit of a doubt now: nor is it that chivalrous love alone which men call romantic; it is a love which may be laid up in every man's heart and practised in every man's life; the words are homely, but the words of Burns are always expressive:—

"The kettle of the kirk and state Perhaps a clout may fail in't, But deil a foreign tinkler loon Shall ever ca' a nail in't. Be Britons still to Britons true, Amang ourselves united; For never but by British hands Shall British wrongs be righted."

But while verses, deserving as these do to become the national motto, and sentiments loyal and generous, were overlooked and forgotten, all his rash words about freedom, and his sarcastic sallies about thrones and kings, were treasured up to his injury, by the mean and the malicious. His steps were watched and his words weighed; when he talked with a friend in the street, he was supposed to utter sedition; and when ladies retired from the table, and the wine circulated with closed doors, he was suspected of treason rather than of toasting, which he often did with much humour, the charms of woman; even when he gave as a sentiment, "May our success be equal to the justice of our cause," he was liable to be challenged by some gunpowder captain, who thought that we deserved success in war, whether right or wrong. It is true that he hated with a most cordial hatred all who presumed on their own consequence, whether arising from wealth, titles, or commissions in the army; officers he usually called "the epauletted puppies," and lords he generally spoke of as "feather-headed fools," who could but strut and stare and be no answer in kind to retort his satiric flings, his unfriends reported that it was unsafe for young men to associate with one whose principles were democratic, and scarcely either modest or safe for young women to listen to a poet whose notions of female virtue were so loose and his songs so free. These sentiments prevailed so far that a gentleman on a visit from London, told me he was dissuaded from inviting Burns to a dinner, given by way of welcome back to his native place, because he was the associate of democrats and loose people; and when a modest dame of Dumfries expressed, through a friend, a wish to have but the honour of speaking to one of whose genius she was an admirer, the poet declined the interview, with a half-serious smile, saying, "Alas! she is handsome, and you know the character publicly assigned to me." She escaped the danger of being numbered, it is likely, with the Annas and the Chlorises of his freer strains.

The neglect of his country, the tyranny of the Excise, and the downfall of his hopes and fortunes, were now to bring forth their fruits—the poet's health began to decline. His drooping looks, his neglect of his person, his solitary saunterings, his escape from the stings of reflection into socialities, and his distempered joy in the company of beauty, all spoke, as plainly as with a tongue, of a sinking heart and a declining body. Yet though he was sensible of sinking health, hope did not at once desert him: he continued to pour out such tender strains, and to show such flashes of wit and humour at the call of Thomson, as are recorded of no other lyrist: neither did he, when in company after his own mind, hang the head, and speak mournfully, but talked and smiled and still charmed all listeners by his witty vivacities.

On the 20th of June, 1795, he writes thus of his fortunes and condition to his friend Clarke, "Still, still the victim of affliction; were you to see the emaciated figure who now holds the pen to you, you would not know your old friend. Whether I shall ever get about again is only known to HIM, the Great Unknown, whoso creature I am. Alas, Clarke, I begin to fear the worst! As to my individual self I am tranquil, and would despise myself if I were not: but Burns's poor widow and half-a-dozen of his dear little ones, helpless orphans! Here I am as weak as a woman's tear. Enough of this! 'tis half my disease. I duly received your last, enclosing the note: it came extremely in time, and I am much obliged to your punctuality. Again I must request you to do me the same kindness. Be so very good as by return of post to enclose me another note: I trust you can do so without inconvenience, and it will seriously oblige me. If I must go, I leave a few friends behind me, whom I shall regret while consciousness remains. I know I shall live in their remembrance. O, dear, dear Clarke! that I shall ever see you again is I am afraid highly improbable." This remarkable letter proves both the declining health, and the poverty of the poet: his digestion was so bad that he could taste neither flesh nor fish: porridge and milk he could alone swallow, and that but in small quantities. When it is recollected that he had no more than thirty shillings a week to keep house, and live like a gentleman, no one need wonder that his wife had to be obliged to a generous neighbour for some of the chief necessaries for her coming confinement, and that the poet had to beg, in extreme need, two guinea notes from a distant friend.

His sinking state was not unobserved by his friends, and Syme and M'Murdo united with Dr. Maxwell in persuading him, at the beginning of the summer, to seek health at the Brow-well, a few miles east of Dumfries, where there were pleasant walks on the Solway-side, and salubrious breezes from the sea, which it was expected would bring the health to the poet they had brought to many. For a while, his looks brightened up, and health seemed inclined to return: his friend, the witty and accomplished Mrs. Riddel, who was herself ailing, paid him a visit. "I was struck," she said, "with his appearance on entering the room: the stamp of death was impressed on his features. His first words were, 'Well, Madam, have you any commands for the other world?' I replied that it seemed a doubtful case which of us should be there soonest; he looked in my face with an air of great kindness, and expressed his concern at seeing me so ill, with his usual sensibility. At table he ate little or nothing: we had a long conversation about his present state, and the approaching termination of all his earthly prospects. He showed great concern about his literary fame, and particularly the publication of his posthumous works; he said he was well aware that his death would occasion some noise, and that every scrap of his writing would be revived against him, to the injury of his future reputation; that letters and verses, written with unguarded freedom, would be handed about by vanity or malevolence when no dread of his resentment would restrain them, or prevent malice or envy from pouring forth their venom on his name. I had seldom seen his mind greater, or more collected. There was frequently a considerable degree of vivacity in his sallies; but the concern and dejection I could not disguise, damped the spirit of pleasantry he seemed willing to indulge." This was on the evening of the 5th of July; another lady who called to see him, found him seated at a window, gazing on the sun, then setting brightly on the summits of the green hills of Nithsdale. "Look how lovely the sun is," said the poet, "but he will soon have done with shining for me."

He now longed for home: his wife, whom he ever tenderly loved, was about to be confined in child-bed: his papers were in sad confusion, and required arrangement; and he felt that desire to die, at least, among familiar things and friendly faces, so common to our nature. He had not long before, though much reduced in pocket, refused with scorn an offer of fifty pounds, which a speculating bookseller made, for leave to publish his looser compositions; he had refused an offer of the like sum yearly, from Perry of the Morning Chronicle, for poetic contributions to his paper, lest it might embroil him with the ruling powers, and he had resented the remittance of five pounds from Thomson, on account of his lyric contributions, and desired him to do so no more, unless he wished to quarrel with him; but his necessities now, and they had at no time been so great, induced him to solicit five pounds from Thomson, and ten pounds from his cousin, James Burness, of Montrose, and to beg his friend Alexander Cunningham to intercede with the Commissioners of Excise, to depart from their usual practice, and grant him his full salary; "for without that," he added, "if I die not of disease, I must perish with hunger." Thomson sent the five pounds, James Burness sent the ten, but the Commissioners of Excise refused to be either merciful or generous. Stobie, a young expectant in the customs, was both;—he performed the duties of the dying poet, and refused to touch the salary. The mind of Burns was haunted with the fears of want and the terrors of a jail; nor were those fears without foundation; one Williamson, to whom he was indebted for the cloth to make his volunteer regimentals, threatened the one; and a feeling that he was without money for either his own illness or the confinement of his wife, threatened the other.

Burns returned from the Brow-well, on the 18th of July: as he walked from the little carriage which brought him up the Mill hole-brae to his own door, he trembled much, and stooped with weakness and pain, and kept his feet with difficulty: his looks were woe-worn and ghastly, and no one who saw him, and there were several, expected to see him again in life. It was soon circulated through Dumfries, that Burns had returned worse from the Brow-well; that Maxwell thought ill of him, and that, in truth, he was dying. The anxiety of all classes was great; differences of opinion were forgotten, in sympathy for his early fate: wherever two or three were met together their talk was of Burns, of his rare wit, matchless humour, the vivacity of his conversation, and the kindness of his heart. To the poet himself, death, which he now knew was at hand, brought with it no fear; his good-humour, which small matters alone ruffled, did not forsake him, and his wit was ever ready. He was poor—he gave his pistols, which he had used against the smugglers on the Solway, to his physician, adding with a smile, that he had tried them and found them an honour to their maker, which was more than he could say of the bulk of mankind! He was proud—he remembered the indifferent practice of the corps to which he belonged, and turning to Gibson, one of his fellow-soldiers, who stood at his bedside with wet eyes, "John," said he, and a gleam of humour passed over his face, "pray don't let the awkward-squad fire over me." It was almost the last act of his life to copy into his Common-place Book, the letters which contained the charge against him of the Commissioners of Excise, and his own eloquent refutation, leaving judgment to be pronounced by the candour of posterity.

It has been injuriously said of Burns, by Coleridge, that the man sunk, but the poet was bright to the last: he did not sink in the sense that these words imply: the man was manly to the latest draught of breath. That he was a poet to the last, can be proved by facts, as well as by the word of the author of Christabel. As he lay silently growing weaker and weaker, he observed Jessie Lewars, a modest and beautiful young creature, and sister to one of his brethren of the Excise, watching over him with moist eyes, and tending him with the care of a daughter; he rewarded her with one of those songs which are an insurance against forgetfulness. The lyrics of the north have nothing finer than this exquisite stanza:—

"Altho' thou maun never be mine, Altho' even hope is denied, 'Tis sweeter for thee despairing, Than aught in the world beside."

His thoughts as he lay wandered to Charlotte Hamilton, and he dedicated some beautiful stanzas to her beauty and her coldness, beginning, "Fairest maid on Devon banks."

It was a sad sight to see the poet gradually sinking; his wife in hourly expectation of her sixth confinement, and his four helpless children—a daughter, a sweet child, had died the year before—with no one of their lineage to soothe them with kind words or minister to their wants. Jessie Lewars, with equal prudence and attention, watched over them all: she could not help seeing that the thoughts of the desolation which his death would bring, pressed sorely on him, for he loved his children, and hoped much from his boys. He wrote to his father-in-law, James Armour, at Mauchline, that he was dying, his wife nigh her confinement, and begged that his mother-in-law would hasten to them and speak comfort. He wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, saying, "I have written to you so often without receiving any answer that I would not trouble you again, but for the circumstances in which I am. An illness which has long hung about me in all probability will speedily send me beyond that bourne whence no traveller returns. Your friendship, with which for many years you honoured me, was a friendship dearest to my soul: your conversation and your correspondence were at once highly entertaining and instructive—with what pleasure did I use to break up the seal! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor palpitating heart. Farewell!" A tremor pervaded his frame; his tongue grew parched, and he was at times delirious: on the fourth day after his return, when his attendant, James Maclure, held his medicine to his lips, he swallowed it eagerly, rose almost wholly up, spread out his hands, sprang forward nigh the whole length of the bed, fell on his face, and expired. He died on the 21st of July, when nearly thirty-seven years and seven months old.

The burial of Burns, on the 25th of July, was an impressive and mournful scene: half the people of Nithsdale and the neighbouring parts of Galloway had crowded into Dumfries, to see their poet "mingled with the earth," and not a few had been permitted to look at his body, laid out for interment. It was a calm and beautiful day, and as the body was borne along the street towards the old kirk-yard, by his brethren of the volunteers, not a sound was heard but the measured step and the solemn music: there was no impatient crushing, no fierce elbowing—the crowd which filled the street seemed conscious of what they were now losing for ever. Even while this pageant was passing, the widow of the poet was taken in labour; but the infant born in that unhappy hour soon shared his father's grave. On reaching the northern nook of the kirk-yard, where the grave was made, the mourners halted; the coffin was divested of the mort-cloth, and silently lowered to its resting-place, and as the first shovel-full of earth fell on the lid, the volunteers, too agitated to be steady, justified the fears of the poet, by three ragged volleys. He who now writes this very brief and imperfect account, was present: he thought then, as he thinks now, that all the military array of foot and horse did not harmonize with either the genius or the fortunes of the poet, and that the tears which he saw on many cheeks around, as the earth was replaced, were worth all the splendour of a show which mocked with unintended mockery the burial of the poor and neglected Burns. The body of the poet was, on the 5th of June, 1815, removed to a more commodious spot in the same burial-ground—his dark, and waving locks looked then fresh and glossy—to afford room for a marble monument, which embodies, with neither skill nor grace, that well-known passage in the dedication to the gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt:—"The poetic genius of my country found me, as the prophetic bard, Elijah, did Elisha, at the plough, and threw her inspiring mantle over me." The dust of the bard was again disturbed, when the body of Mrs. Burns was laid, in April, 1834, beside the remains of her husband: his skull was dug up by the district craniologists, to satisfy their minds by measurement that he was equal to the composition of "Tam o' Shanter," or "Mary in Heaven." This done, they placed the skull in a leaden box, "carefully lined with the softest materials," and returned it, we hope for ever, to the hallowed ground.

Thus lived and died Robert Burns, the chief of Scottish poets: in his person he was tall and sinewy, and of such strength and activity, that Scott alone, of all the poets I have seen, seemed his equal: his forehead was broad, his hair black, with an inclination to curl, his visage uncommonly swarthy, his eyes large, dark and lustrous, and his voice deep and manly. His sensibility was strong, his passions full to overflowing, and he loved, nay, adored, whatever was gentle and beautiful. He had, when a lad at the plough, an eloquent word and an inspired song for every fair face that smiled on him, and a sharp sarcasm or a fierce lampoon for every rustic who thwarted or contradicted him. As his first inspiration came from love, he continued through life to love on, and was as ready with the lasting incense of the muse for the ladies of Nithsdale as for the lasses of Kyle: his earliest song was in praise of a young girl who reaped by his side, when he was seventeen—his latest in honour of a lady by whose side he had wandered and dreamed on the banks of the Devon. He was of a nature proud and suspicious, and towards the close of his life seemed disposed to regard all above him in rank as men who unworthily possessed the patrimony of genius: he desired to see the order of nature restored, and worth and talent in precedence of the base or the dull. He had no medium in his hatred or his love; he never spared the stupid, as if they were not to be endured because he was bright; and on the heads of the innocent possessors of titles or wealth he was ever ready to shower his lampoons. He loved to start doubts in religion which he knew inspiration only could solve, and he spoke of Calvinism with a latitude of language that grieved pious listeners. He was warm-hearted and generous to a degree, above all men, and scorned all that was selfish and mean with a scorn quite romantic. He was a steadfast friend and a good neighbour: while he lived at Ellisland few passed his door without being entertained at his table; and even when in poverty, on the Millhole-brae, the poor seldom left his door but with blessings on their lips.

Of his modes of study he has himself informed us, as well as of the seasons and the places in which he loved to muse. He composed while he strolled along the secluded banks of the Doon, the Ayr, or the Nith: as the images crowded on his fancy his pace became quickened, and in his highest moods he was excited even to tears. He loved the winter for its leafless trees, its swelling floods, and its winds which swept along the gloomy sky, with frost and snow on their wings: but he loved the autumn more—he has neglected to say why—the muse was then more liberal of her favours, and he composed with a happy alacrity unfelt in all other seasons. He filled his mind and heart with the materials of song—and retired from gazing on woman's beauty, and from the excitement of her charms, to record his impressions in verse, as a painter delineates oil his canvas the looks of those who sit to his pencil. His chief place of study at Ellisland is still remembered: it extends along the river-bank towards the Isle: there the neighbouring gentry love to walk and peasants to gather, and hold it sacred, as the place where he composed Tam O' Shanter. His favourite place of study when residing in Dumfries, was the ruins of Lincluden College, made classic by that sublime ode, "The Vision," and that level and clovery sward contiguous to the College, on the northern side of the Nith: the latter place was his favourite resort; it is known now by the name of Burns's musing ground, and there he conceived many of his latter lyrics. In case of interruption he completed the verses at the fireside, where he swung to and fro in his arm-chair till the task was done: he then submitted the song to the ordeal of his wife's voice, which was both sweet and clear, and while she sung he listened attentively, and altered or amended till the whole was in harmony, music and words.

The genius of Burns is of a high order: in brightness of expression and unsolicited ease and natural vehemence of language, he stands in the first rank of poets: in choice of subjects, in happiness of conception, and loftiness of imagination, he recedes into the second. He owes little of his fame to his objects, for, saving the beauty of a few ladies, they were all of an ordinary kind: he sought neither in romance nor in history for themes to the muse; he took up topics from life around which were familiar to all, and endowed them with character, with passion, with tenderness, with humour—elevating all that he touched into the regions of poetry and morals. He went to no far lands for the purpose of surprising us with wonders, neither did he go to crowns or coronets to attract the stare of the peasantry around him, by things which to them were as a book shut and sealed: "The Daisy" grew on the lands which he ploughed; "The Mouse" built her frail nest on his own stubble-field; "The Haggis" reeked on his own table; "The Scotch Drink" of which he sang was the produce of a neighbouring still; "The Twa Dogs," which conversed so wisely and wittily, were, one of them at least, his own collies; "The Vision" is but a picture, and a brilliant one, of his own hopes and fears; "Tam Samson" was a friend whom he loved; "Doctor Hornbook" a neighbouring pedant; "Matthew Henderson" a social captain on half-pay; "The Scotch Bard" who had gone to the West Indies was Burns himself; the heroine of "The Lament" was Jean Armour; and "Tam O' Shanter" a facetious farmer of Kyle, who rode late and loved pleasant company, nay, even "The Deil" himself, whom he had the hardihood to address, was a being whose eldrich croon bad alarmed the devout matrons of Kyle, and had wandered, not unseen by the bard himself, among the lonely glens of the Doon. Burns was one of the first to teach the world that high moral poetry resided in the humblest subjects: whatever he touched became elevated; his spirit possessed and inspired the commonest topics, and endowed them with life and beauty.

His songs have all the beauties and but few of them the faults of his poems: they flow to the music as readily as if both air and words came into the world together. The sentiments are from nature, they are rarely strained or forced, and the words dance in their places and echo the music in its pastoral sweetness, social glee, or in the tender and the moving. He seems always to write with woman's eye upon him: he is gentle, persuasive and impassioned: he appears to watch her looks, and pours out his praise or his complaint according to the changeful moods of her mind. He looks on her, too, with a sculptor's as well as a poet's eye: to him who works in marble, the diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and elaborate ornaments of gold, but load and injure the harmony of proportion, the grace of form, and divinity of sentiment of his nymph or his goddess—so with Burns the fashion of a lady's boddice, the lustre of her satins, or the sparkle of her diamonds, or other finery with which wealth or taste has loaded her, are neglected us idle frippery; while her beauty, her form, or her mind, matters which are of nature and not of fashion, are remembered and praised. He is none of the millinery bards, who deal in scented silks, spider-net laces, rare gems, set in rarer workmanship, and who shower diamonds and pearls by the bushel on a lady's locks: he makes bright eyes, flushing cheeks, the magic of the tongue, and the "pulses' maddening play" perform all. His songs are, in general, pastoral pictures: he seldom finishes a portrait of female beauty without enclosing it in a natural frame-work of waving woods, running streams, the melody of birds, and the lights of heaven. Those who desire to feel Burns in all his force, must seek some summer glen, when a country girl searches among his many songs for one which sympathizes with her own heart, and gives it full utterance, till wood and vale is filled with the melody. It is remarkable that the most naturally elegant and truly impassioned songs in our literature were written by a ploughman in honour of the rustic lasses around him.

His poetry is all life and energy, and bears the impress of a warm heart and a clear understanding: it abounds with passions and opinions—vivid pictures of rural happiness and the raptures of successful love, all fresh from nature and observation, and not as they are seen through the spectacles of books. The wit of the clouted shoe is there without its coarseness: there is a prodigality of humour without licentiousness, a pathos ever natural and manly, a social joy akin sometimes to sadness, a melancholy not unallied to mirth, and a sublime morality which seeks to elevate and soothe. To a love of man he added an affection for the flowers of the valley, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field: he perceived the tie of social sympathy which united animated with unanimated nature, and in many of his finest poems most beautifully he has enforced it. His thoughts are original and his style new and unborrowed: all that he has written is distinguished by a happy carelessness, a bounding elasticity of spirit, and a singular felicity of expression, simple yet inimitable; he is familiar yet dignified, careless, yet correct, and concise, yet clear and full. All this and much more is embodied in the language of humble life—a dialect reckoned barbarous by scholars, but which, coming from the lips of inspiration, becomes classic and elevated.

The prose of this great poet has much of the original merit of his verse, but it is seldom so natural and so sustained: it abounds with fine outflashings and with a genial warmth and vigour, but it is defaced by false ornament and by a constant anxiety to say fine and forcible things. He seems not to know that simplicity was as rare and as needful a beauty in prose as in verse; he covets the pauses of Sterne and the point and antithesis of Junius, like one who believes that to write prose well he must be ever lively, ever pointed, and ever smart. Yet the account which he wrote of himself to Dr. Moore is one of the most spirited and natural narratives in the language, and composed in a style remote from the strained and groped-for witticisms and put-on sensibilities of many of his letters:—"Simple," as John Wilson says, "we may well call it; rich in fancy, overflowing in feeling, and dashed off in every other paragraph with the easy boldness of a great master."



PREFACE.

[The first edition, printed at Kilmarnock, July, 1786, by John Wilson, bore on the title-page these simple words:—"Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, by Robert Burns;" the following motto, marked "Anonymous," but evidently the poet's own composition, was more ambitious:—

"The simple Bard, unbroke by rules of art, He pours the wild effusions of the heart: And if inspired, 'tis nature's pow'rs inspire— Hers all the melting thrill, and hers the kindling fire."]

The following trifles are not the production of the Poet, who, with all the advantages of learned art, and perhaps amid the elegancies and idlenesses of upper life, looks down for a rural theme with an eye to Theocritus or Virgil. To the author of this, these, and other celebrated names their countrymen, are, at least in their original language, a fountain shut up, and a book sealed. Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing poet by rule, he sings the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him in his and their native language. Though a rhymer from his earliest years, at least from the earliest impulse of the softer passions, it was not till very lately that the applause, perhaps the partiality, of friendship awakened his vanity so for as to make him think anything of his worth showing: and none of the following works were composed with a view to the press. To amuse himself with the little creations of his own fancy, amid the toil and fatigue of a laborious life; to transcribe the various feelings—the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears—in his own breast; to find some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of a world, always an alien scene, a task uncouth to the poetical mind—these were his motives for courting the Muses, and in these he found poetry to be its own reward.

Now that he appears in the public character of an author, he does it with fear and trembling. So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe, that even he, an obscure, nameless Bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as—an impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and, because he can make a shift to jingle a few doggerel Scotch rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of no small consequence, forsooth!

It is an observation of that celebrated poet, Shenstone, whose divine elegies do honour to our language, our nation, and our species, that "Humility has depressed many a genius to a hermit, but never raised one to fame!" If any critic catches at the word genius the author tells him, once for all, that he certainly looks upon himself as possessed of some poetic abilities, otherwise his publishing in the manner he has done would be a manoeuvre below the worst character, which, he hopes, his worst enemy will ever give him. But to the genius of a Ramsay, or the glorious dawnings of the poor, unfortunate Fergusson, he, with equal unaffected sincerity, declares, that even in his highest pulse of vanity, he has not the most distant pretensions. These two justly admired Scotch poets he has often had in his eye in the following pieces, but rather with a view to kindle at their flame, than for servile imitation.

To his Subscriber, the Author returns his most sincere thanks. Not the mercenary bow over a counter, but the heart-throbbing gratitude of the Bard, conscious how much he owes to benevolence and friendship for gratifying him, if he deserves it, in that dearest wish of every poetic bosom—to be distinguished. He begs his readers, particularly the learned and the polite, who may honour him with a perusal, that they will make every allowance for education and circumstances of life; but if, after a fair, candid, and impartial criticism, he shall stand convicted of dulness and nonsense, let him be done by as he would in that case do by others—let him be condemned, without mercy, in contempt and oblivion.



THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

ROBERT BURNS.

I.

WINTER.

A DIRGE.

[This is one of the earliest of the poet's recorded compositions: it was written before the death of his father, and is called by Gilbert Burns, 'a juvenile production.' To walk by a river while flooded, or through a wood on a rough winter day, and hear the storm howling among the leafless trees, exalted the poet's thoughts. "In such a season," he said, "just after a train of misfortunes, I composed Winter, a Dirge."]

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,"[1] 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!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Dr. Young.]

* * * * *



II.

THE

DEATH AND DYING WORDS

OF

POOR MAILIE,

THE AUTHOR'S ONLY PET YOWE.

AN UNCO MOURNFU' TALE.

[This tale is partly true; the poet's pet ewe got entangled in her tether, and tumbled into a ditch; the face of ludicrous and awkward sorrow with which this was related by Hughoc, the herd-boy, amused Burns so much, who was on his way to the plough, that he immediately composed the poem, and repeated it to his brother Gilbert when they met in the evening; the field where the poet held the plough, and the ditch into which poor Mailie fell, are still pointed out.]

As Mailie, an' her lambs thegither, Were ae day nibbling on the tether, Upon her cloot she coost a hitch, An' owre she warsl'd in the ditch: There, groaning, dying, she did lie, When Hughoc[2] he cam doytin by. Wi' glowing e'en an' lifted han's, Poor Hughoc like a statue stan's; He saw her days were near-hand ended, But, waes my heart! he could na mend it! He gaped wide but naething spak— At length poor Mailie silence brak.

"O thou, whose lamentable face Appears to mourn my woefu' case! My dying words attentive hear, An' bear them to my master dear.

"Tell him, if e'er again he keep As muckle gear as buy a sheep, O bid him never tie them mair Wi' wicked strings o' hemp or hair! But ca' them out to park or hill, An' let them wander at their will; So may his flock increase, and grow To scores o' lambs, an' packs of woo'!

"Tell him he was a master kin' An' ay was gude to me an' mine; An' now my dying charge I gie him, My helpless lambs, I trust them wi' him.

"O, bid him save their harmless lives Frae dogs, and tods, an' butchers' knives! But gie them guid cow-milk their fill, Till they be fit to fend themsel; An' tent them duly, e'en an' morn, Wi' teats o' hay, an' ripps o' corn.

"An' may they never learn the gaets Of ither vile, wanrestfu' pets! To sink thro' slaps, an' reave an' steal At stacks o' pease, or stocks o' kail. So may they, like their great forbears, For monie a year come thro' the sheers; So wives will gie them bits o' bread, An' bairns greet for them when they're dead.

"My poor toop-lamb, my son an' heir, O, bid him breed him up wi' care; An' if he live to be a beast, To pit some havins in his breast! An' warn him what I winna name, To stay content wi' yowes at hame An' no to rin an' wear his cloots, Like ither menseless, graceless brutes.

"An' niest my yowie, silly thing, Gude keep thee frae a tether string! O, may thou ne'er forgather up Wi' ony blastit, moorland toop, But ay keep mind to moop an' mell Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel!

"And now, my bairns, wi' my last breath I lea'e my blessin wi' you baith: An' when you think upo' your mither, Mind to be kind to ane anither.

"Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail To tell my master a' my tale; An' bid him burn this cursed tether, An', for thy pains, thou'se get my blather."

This said, poor Mailie turn'd her head, And clos'd her een amang the dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: A neibor herd-callan.]

* * * * *



III.

POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY.

[Burns, when he calls on the bards of Ayr and Doon to join in the lament for Mailie, intimates that he regards himself as a poet. Hogg calls it a very elegant morsel: but says that it resembles too closely "The Ewie and the Crooked Horn," to be admired as original: the shepherd might have remembered that they both resemble Sempill's "Life and death of the Piper of Kilbarchan."]

Lament in rhyme, lament in prose, Wi' saut tears trickling down your nose; Our bardie's fate is at a close, Past a' remead; The last sad cape-stane of his woes; Poor Mailie's dead.

It's no the loss o' warl's gear, That could sae bitter draw the tear, Or mak our bardie, dowie, wear The mourning weed; He's lost a friend and neebor dear, In Mailie dead.

Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him; A long half-mile she could descry him; Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him, She run wi' speed: A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him, Than Mailie dead.

I wat she was a sheep o' sense, An' could behave hersel wi' mense: I'll say't, she never brak a fence, Thro' thievish greed. Our bardie, tamely, keeps the spence Sin' Mailie's dead.

Or, if he wonders up the howe, Her living image in her yowe Comes bleating to him, owre the knowe, For bits o' bread; An' down the briny pearls rowe For Mailie dead.

She was nae get o' moorland tips,[3] Wi' tawted ket, an hairy hips; For her forbears were brought in ships Frae yont the Tweed: A bonnier fleesh ne'er cross'd the clips Than Mailie dead.

Wae worth the man wha first did shape That vile, wanchancie thing—a rape! It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, Wi' chokin dread; An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape, For Mailie dead.

O, a' ye bards on bonnie Doon! An' wha on Ayr your chanters tune! Come, join the melancholious croon O' Robin's reed! His heart will never get aboon! His Mailie's dead!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: VARIATION.

'She was nae get o' runted rams, Wi' woo' like goats an' legs like trams; She was the flower o' Farlie lambs, A famous breed! Now Robin, greetin, chews the hams O' Mailie dead.']

* * * * *



IV.

FIRST EPISTLE TO DAVIE,

A BROTHER POET

[In the summer of 1781, Burns, while at work in the garden, repeated this Epistle to his brother Gilbert, who was much pleased with the performance, which he considered equal if not superior to some of Allan Ramsay's Epistles, and said if it were printed he had no doubt that it would be well received by people of taste.]

—January, [1784.]

I.

While winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw, And bar the doors wi' driving snaw, And hing us owre the ingle, I set me down to pass the time, And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme, In hamely westlin jingle. While frosty winds blaw in the drift, Ben to the chimla lug, I grudge a wee the great folks' gift, That live sae bien an' snug: I tent less and want less Their roomy fire-side; But hanker and canker To see their cursed pride.

II.

It's hardly in a body's power To keep, at times, frae being sour, To see how things are shar'd; How best o' chiels are whiles in want. While coofs on countless thousands rant, And ken na how to wair't; But Davie, lad, ne'er fash your head, Tho' we hae little gear, We're fit to win our daily bread, As lang's we're hale and fier: "Muir spier na, nor fear na,"[4] Auld age ne'er mind a feg, The last o't, the warst o't, Is only but to beg.

III.

To lie in kilns and barns at e'en When banes are craz'd, and bluid is thin, Is, doubtless, great distress! Yet then content could make us blest; Ev'n then, sometimes we'd snatch a taste O' truest happiness. The honest heart that's free frae a' Intended fraud or guile, However Fortune kick the ba', Has ay some cause to smile: And mind still, you'll find still, A comfort this nae sma'; Nae mair then, we'll care then, Nae farther we can fa'.

IV.

What tho', like commoners of air, We wander out we know not where, But either house or hall? Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods, The sweeping vales, and foaming floods, Are free alike to all. In days when daisies deck the ground, And blackbirds whistle clear, With honest joy our hearts will bound To see the coming year: On braes when we please, then, We'll sit and sowth a tune; Syne rhyme till't we'll time till't, And sing't when we hae done.

V.

It's no in titles nor in rank; It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, To purchase peace and rest; It's no in makin muckle mair; It's no in books, it's no in lear, To make us truly blest; If happiness hae not her seat And centre in the breast, We may be wise, or rich, or great, But never can be blest: Nae treasures, nor pleasures, Could make us happy lang; The heart ay's the part ay That makes us right or wrang.

VI.

Think ye, that sic as you and I, Wha drudge and drive thro' wet an' dry, Wi' never-ceasing toil; Think ye, are we less blest than they, Wha scarcely tent us in their way, As hardly worth their while? Alas! how aft, in haughty mood God's creatures they oppress! Or else, neglecting a' that's guid, They riot in excess! Baith careless and fearless Of either heaven or hell! Esteeming and deeming It's a' an idle tale!

VII.

Then let us cheerfu' acquiesce; Nor make one scanty pleasures less, By pining at our state; And, even should misfortunes come, I, here wha sit, hae met wi' some, An's thankfu' for them yet. They gie the wit of age to youth; They let us ken oursel'; They make us see the naked truth, The real guid and ill. Tho' losses, and crosses, Be lessons right severe, There's wit there, ye'll get there, Ye'll find nae other where.

VIII.

But tent me, Davie, ace o' hearts! (To say aught less wad wrang the cartes, And flatt'ry I detest,) This life has joys for you and I; And joys that riches ne'er could buy: And joys the very best. There's a' the pleasures o' the heart, The lover an' the frien'; Ye hae your Meg your dearest part, And I my darling Jean! It warms me, it charms me, To mention but her name: It heats me, it beets me, And sets me a' on flame!

IX.

O, all ye pow'rs who rule above! O, Thou, whose very self art love! Thou know'st my words sincere! The life-blood streaming thro' my heart, Or my more dear immortal part, Is not more fondly dear! When heart-corroding care and grief Deprive my soul of rest, Her dear idea brings relief And solace to my breast. Thou Being, All-seeing, O hear my fervent pray'r! Still take her, and make her Thy most peculiar care!

X.

All hail, ye tender feelings dear! The smile of love, the friendly tear, The sympathetic glow! Long since, this world's thorny ways Had number'd out my weary days, Had it not been for you! Fate still has blest me with a friend, In every care and ill; And oft a more endearing hand, A tie more tender still. It lightens, it brightens The tenebrific scene, To meet with, and greet with My Davie or my Jean!

XI.

O, how that name inspires my style The words come skelpin, rank and file, Amaist before I ken! The ready measure rins as fine, As Phoebus and the famous Nine Were glowrin owre my pen. My spaviet Pegasus will limp, 'Till ance he's fairly het; And then he'll hilch, and stilt, and jimp, An' rin an unco fit: But least then, the beast then Should rue this hasty ride, I'll light now, and dight now His sweaty, wizen'd hide.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: Ramsay.]

* * * * *



V.

SECOND EPISTLE TO DAVIE,

A BROTHER POET.

[David Sillar, to whom these epistles are addressed, was at that time master of a country school, and was welcome to Burns both as a scholar and a writer of verse. This epistle he prefixed to his poems printed at Kilmarnock in the year 1789: he loved to speak of his early comrade, and supplied Walker with some very valuable anecdotes: he died one of the magistrates of Irvine, on the 2d of May, 1830, at the age of seventy.]

AULD NIBOR, I'm three times doubly o'er your debtor, For your auld-farrent, frien'ly letter; Tho' I maun say't, I doubt ye flatter, Ye speak sae fair. For my puir, silly, rhymin clatter Some less maun sair.

Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle; Lang may your elbuck jink and diddle, To cheer you thro' the weary widdle O' war'ly cares, Till bairn's bairns kindly cuddle Your auld, gray hairs.

But Davie, lad, I'm red ye're glaikit; I'm tauld the Muse ye hae negleckit; An' gif it's sae, ye sud be licket Until yo fyke; Sic hauns as you sud ne'er be faiket, Be hain't who like.

For me, I'm on Parnassus' brink, Rivin' the words to gar them clink; Whyles daez't wi' love, whyles daez't wi' drink, Wi' jads or masons; An' whyles, but ay owre late, I think Braw sober lessons.

Of a' the thoughtless sons o' man, Commen' me to the Bardie clan; Except it be some idle plan O' rhymin' clink, The devil-haet, that I sud ban, They ever think.

Nae thought, nae view, nae scheme o' livin', Nae cares to gie us joy or grievin'; But just the pouchie put the nieve in, An' while ought's there, Then hiltie skiltie, we gae scrievin', An' fash nae mair.

Leeze me on rhyme! it's aye a treasure, My chief, amaist my only pleasure, At hame, a-fiel', at work, or leisure, The Muse, poor hizzie! Tho' rough an' raploch be her measure, She's seldom lazy.

Haud to the Muse, my dainty Davie: The warl' may play you monie a shavie; But for the Muse she'll never leave ye, Tho' e'er so puir, Na, even tho' limpin' wi' the spavie Frae door to door.

* * * * *



VI.

ADDRESS TO THE DEIL

"O Prince! O Chief of many throned Pow'rs, That led th' embattled Seraphim to war."

MILTON

[The beautiful and relenting spirit in which this fine poem finishes moved the heart on one of the coldest of our critics. "It was, I think," says Gilbert Burns, "in the winter of 1784, as we were going with carts for coals to the family fire, and I could yet point out the particular spot, that Robert first repeated to me the 'Address to the Deil.' The idea of the address was suggested to him by running over in his mind the many ludicrous accounts we have of that august personage."]

O thou! whatever title suit thee, Auld Hornie, Satan, Kick, or Clootie, Wha in yon cavern grim an' sootie, Closed under hatches, Spairges about the brunstane cootie, To scaud poor wretches!

Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee, An' let poor damned bodies be; I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie, E'en to a deil, To skelp an' scaud poor dogs like me, An' hear us squeel!

Great is thy pow'r, an' great thy fame; Far kend an' noted is thy name; An' tho' yon lowin heugh's thy hame, Thou travels far; An', faith! thou's neither lag nor lame, Nor blate nor scaur.

Whyles, ranging like a roaring lion, For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin; Whyles, on the strong-winged tempest flyin, Tirlin the kirks; Whiles, in the human bosom pryin, Unseen thou lurks.

I've heard my reverend Graunie say, In lanely glens ye like to stray; Or where auld-ruin'd castles, gray, Nod to the moon, Ye fright the nightly wand'rer's way Wi' eldricht croon.

When twilight did my Graunie summon, To say her prayers, douce, honest woman! Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin, Wi' eerie drone; Or, rustlin, thro' the boortries comin, Wi' heavy groan.

Ae dreary, windy, winter night, The stars shot down wi' sklentin light, Wi' you, mysel, I gat a fright Ayont the lough; Ye, like a rash-buss, stood in sight, Wi' waving sough.

The cudgel in my nieve did shake. Each bristl'd hair stood like a stake, When wi' an eldritch, stoor quaick—quaick— Amang the springs, Awa ye squatter'd, like a drake, On whistling wings.

Let warlocks grim, an' wither'd hags, Tell how wi' you, on rag weed nags, They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues Owre howkit dead.

Thence countra wives, wi' toil an' pain, May plunge an' plunge the kirn in vain: For, oh! the yellow treasure's taen By witching skill; An' dawtit, twal-pint hawkie's gaen As yell's the bill.

Thence mystic knots mak great abuse On young guidmen, fond, keen, an' crouse; When the best wark-lume i' the house By cantrip wit, Is instant made no worth a louse, Just at the bit,

When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord, An' float the jinglin icy-boord, Then water-kelpies haunt the foord, By your direction; An' nighted trav'llers are allur'd To their destruction.

An' aft your moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is, The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne'er mair to rise.

When masons' mystic word an' grip In storms an' tempests raise you up, Some cock or cat your rage maun stop, Or, strange to tell! The youngest brother ye wad whip Aff straught to hell!

Lang syne, in Eden's bonie yard, When youthfu' lovers first were pair'd, An' all the soul of love they shar'd, The raptur'd hour, Sweet on the fragrant, flow'ry sward, In shady bow'r:

Then you, ye auld, snick-drawing dog! Ye came to Paradise incog. An' play'd on man a cursed brogue, (Black be your fa'!) An' gied the infant world a shog, 'Maist ruin'd a'.

D'ye mind that day, when in a bizz, Wi' reekit duds, an' reestit gizz, Ye did present your smoutie phiz 'Mang better folk, An' sklented on the man of Uzz Your spitefu' joke?

An' how ye gat him i' your thrall, An' brak him out o' house an' hall, While scabs an' botches did him gall, Wi' bitter claw, An' lows'd his ill tongu'd, wicked scawl, Was warst ava?

But a' your doings to rehearse, Your wily snares an' fechtin fierce, Sin' that day Michael did you pierce, Down to this time, Wad ding a' Lallan tongue, or Erse, In prose or rhyme.

An' now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin, A certain Bardie's rantin, drinkin, Some luckless hour will send him linkin To your black pit; But, faith! he'll turn a corner jinkin, An' cheat you yet.

But fare ye well, auld Nickie-ben! O wad ye tak a thought an' men'! Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken— Still hae a stake— I'm wae to think upo' yon den Ev'n for your sake!

* * * * *



VII.

THE AULD FARMER'S

NEW-YEAR MORNING SALUTATION TO HIS

AULD MARE MAGGIE,

ON GIVING HER THE ACCUSTOMED RIPP OF CORN TO HANSEL IN THE NEW YEAR

["Whenever Burns has occasion," says Hogg, "to address or mention any subordinate being, however mean, even a mouse or a flower, then there is a gentle pathos in it that awakens the finest feelings of the heart." The Auld Farmer of Kyle has the spirit of knight-errant, and loves his mare according to the rules of chivalry; and well he might: she carried him safely home from markets, triumphantly from wedding-brooses; she ploughed the stiffest land; faced the steepest brae, and, moreover, bore home his bonnie bride with a consciousness of the loveliness of the load.]

A guid New-year I wish thee, Maggie! Hae, there's a rip to thy auld baggie: Tho' thou's howe-backit, now, an' knaggie, I've seen the day Thou could hae gaen like onie staggie Out-owre the lay.

Tho' now thou's dowie, stiff, an' crazy, An' thy auld hide as white's a daisy, I've seen thee dappl't, sleek, and glaizie, A bonny gray: He should been tight that daur't to raize thee, Ance in a day.

Thou ance was i' the foremost rank, A filly, buirdly, steeve, an' swank, An set weel down a shapely shank, As e'er tread yird; An' could hae flown out-owre a stank, Like ony bird.

It's now some nine-an'-twenty year, Sin' thou was my guid-father's Meere; He gied me thee, o' tocher clear, An' fifty mark; Tho' it was sma', 'twas weel-won gear, An' thou was stark.

When first I gaed to woo my Jenny, Ye then was trottin wi' your minnie: Tho' ye was trickle, slee, an' funny, Ye ne'er was donsie: But hamely, tawie, quiet an' cannie, An' unco sonsie.

That day ye pranc'd wi' muckle pride, When ye bure hame my bonnie bride: An' sweet an' gracefu' she did ride, Wi' maiden air! Kyle-Stewart I could bragged wide, For sic a pair.

Tho' now ye dow but hoyte and hoble, An' wintle like a saumont-coble, That day, ye was a jinker noble, For heels an' win'! An' ran them till they a' did wauble, Far, far, behin'!

When thou an' I were young an' skeigh, An' stable-meals at fairs were dreigh, How thou wad prance, an' snore, an' skreigh, An' tak the road! Town's bodies ran, an' stood abeigh, An' ca't thee mad.

When thou was corn't, an' I was mellow, We took the road ay like a swallow: At Brooses thou had ne'er a fellow, For pith an' speed; But every tail thou pay't them hollow, Where'er thou gaed.

The sma', droop-rumpl't, hunter cattle, Might aiblins waur't thee for a brattle; But sax Scotch miles thou try't their mettle, An' gar't them whaizle: Nae whip nor spur, but just a whattle O' saugh or hazle.

Thou was a noble fittie-lan', As e'er in tug or tow was drawn: Aft thee an' I, in aught hours gaun, In guid March-weather, Hae turn'd sax rood beside our han' For days thegither.

Thou never braindg't, an' fetch't, an' fliskit, But thy auld tail thou wad hae whiskit, An' spread abreed thy weel-fill'd brisket, Wi' pith an' pow'r, 'Till spiritty knowes wad rair't and risket, An' slypet owre.

When frosts lay lang, an' snaws were deep, An' threaten'd labour back to keep, I gied thy cog a wee-bit heap Aboon the timmer; I ken'd my Maggie wad na sleep For that, or simmer.

In cart or car thou never reestit; The steyest brae thou wad hae fac't it; Thou never lap, an' sten't, an' breastit, Then stood to blaw; But just thy step a wee thing hastit, Thou snoov't awa.

My pleugh is now thy bairntime a'; Four gallant brutes as e'er did draw; Forbye sax mae, I've sell't awa, That thou hast nurst: They drew me thretteen pund an' twa, The vera worst.

Monie a sair daurk we twa hae wrought, An, wi' the weary warl' fought! An' monie an anxious day, I thought We wad be beat! Yet here to crazy age we're brought, Wi' something yet.

And think na, my auld, trusty servan', That now perhaps thou's less deservin, An' thy auld days may end in starvin, For my last fow, A heapit stimpart, I'll reserve ane Laid by for you.

We've worn to crazy years thegither; We'll toyte about wi' ane anither; Wi' tentie care I'll flit thy tether, To some hain'd rig, Whare ye may nobly rax your leather, Wi' sma' fatigue.

* * * * *



VIII.

TO A HAGGIS.

[The vehement nationality of this poem is but a small part of its merit. The haggis of the north is the minced pie of the south; both are characteristic of the people: the ingredients which compose the former are all of Scottish growth, including the bag which contains them; the ingredients of the latter are gathered chiefly from the four quarters of the globe: the haggis is the triumph of poverty, the minced pie the triumph of wealth.]

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the pudding-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o' a grace As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill, Your hurdies like a distant hill, Your pin wad help to mend a mill In time o' need, While thro' your pores the dews distil Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic-labour dight, An' cut you up wi' ready slight, Trenching your gushing entrails bright Like onie ditch; And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm-reekin, rich!

Then horn for horn they stretch an' strive, Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive, 'Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve Are bent like drums; Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive, Bethankit hums.

Is there that o'er his French ragout, Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad mak her spew Wi' perfect sconner, Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash, As feckless as a wither'd rash, His spindle shank a guid whip-lash, His nieve a nit; Thro' bloody flood or field to dash, O how unfit!

But mark the rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread, Clap in his walie nieve a blade, He'll mak it whissle; An' legs, an' arms, an' heads will sned, Like taps o' thrissle.

Ye pow'rs wha mak mankind your care, And dish them out their bill o' fare, Auld Scotland wants nae stinking ware That jaups in luggies; But, if ye wish her gratefu' pray'r, Gie her a Haggis!

* * * * *



IX.

A PRAYER,

UNDER THE PRESSURE OF VIOLENT ANGUISH.

["There was a certain period of my life," says Burns, "that my spirit was broke by repeated losses and disasters, which threatened and indeed effected the ruin of my fortune. My body, too, was attacked by the most dreadful distemper, a hypochondria or confirmed melancholy. In this wretched state, the recollection of which makes me yet shudder, I hung my harp on the willow-trees, except in some lucid intervals, in one of which I composed the following."]

O Thou Great Being! what Thou art Surpasses me to know; Yet sure I am, that known to Thee Are all Thy works below.

Thy creature here before Thee stands, All wretched and distrest; Yet sure those ills that wring my soul Obey Thy high behest.

Sure Thou, Almighty, canst not act From cruelty or wrath! O, free my weary eyes from tears, Or close them fast in death!

But if I must afflicted be, To suit some wise design; Then, man my soul with firm resolves To bear and not repine!

* * * * *



X.

A PRAYER

IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH.

[I have heard the third verse of this very moving Prayer quoted by scrupulous men as a proof that the poet imputed his errors to the Being who had endowed him with wild and unruly passions. The meaning is very different: Burns felt the torrent-strength of passion overpowering his resolution, and trusted that God would be merciful to the errors of one on whom he had bestowed such o'ermastering gifts.]

O Thou unknown, Almighty Cause Of all my hope and fear? In whose dread presence, ere an hour Perhaps I must appear!

If I have wander'd in those paths Of life I ought to shun; As something, loudly, in my breast, Remonstrates I have done;

Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me, With passions wild and strong; And list'ning to their witching voice Has often led me wrong.

Where human weakness has come short, Or frailty stept aside, Do Thou, All-Good! for such thou art, In shades of darkness hide.

Where with intention I have err'd, No other plea I have, But, Thou art good; and goodness still Delighteth to forgive.

* * * * *



XI.

STANZAS

ON THE SAME OCCASION.

[These verses the poet, in his common-place book, calls "Misgivings in the Hour of Despondency and Prospect of Death." He elsewhere says they were composed when fainting-fits and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy, or some other dangerous disorder, first put nature on the alarm.]

Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene? How I so found it full of pleasing charms? Some drops of joy with draughts of ill between: Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms: Is it departing pangs my soul alarms? Or Death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode? For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms; I tremble to approach an angry God, And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.

Fain would I say, "Forgive my foul offence!" Fain promise never more to disobey; But, should my Author health again dispense, Again I might desert fair virtue's way: Again in folly's path might go astray; Again exalt the brute and sink the man; Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan? Who sin so oft have mourn'd, yet to temptation ran?

O Thou, great Governor of all below! If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, Or still the tumult of the raging sea: With that controlling pow'r assist ev'n me Those headlong furious passions to confine; For all unfit I feel my pow'rs to be, To rule their torrent in th' allowed line; O, aid me with Thy help, Omnipotence Divine!

* * * * *



XII.

A WINTER NIGHT.

"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm! How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your looped and widow'd raggedness defend you From seasons such as these?"

SHAKSPEARE.

["This poem," says my friend Thomas Carlyle, "is worth several homilies on mercy, for it is the voice of Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy: his soul rushes forth into all the realms of being: nothing that has existence can be indifferent to him."]

When biting Boreas, fell and doure, Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r; When Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r Far south the lift, Dim-darkening through the flaky show'r, Or whirling drift:

Ae night the storm the steeples rocked, Poor labour sweet in sleep was locked, While burns, wi' snawy wreeths up-choked, Wild-eddying swirl. Or through the mining outlet bocked, Down headlong hurl.

Listening, the doors an' winnocks rattle, I thought me on the ourie cattle, Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle O' winter war, And through the drift, deep-lairing sprattle Beneath a scar.

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, That, in the merry months o' spring, Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o' thee? Whare wilt thou cower thy chittering wing, An' close thy e'e?

Ev'n you on murd'ring errands toil'd, Lone from your savage homes exiled, The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled My heart forgets, While pitiless the tempest wild Sore on you beats.

Now Phoebe, in her midnight reign, Dark muffled, viewed the dreary plain; Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train, Rose in my soul, When on my ear this plaintive strain Slow, solemn, stole:—

"Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust! And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost: Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows! Not all your rage, as now united, shows More hard unkindness, unrelenting, Vengeful malice unrepenting, Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows; See stern oppression's iron grip, Or mad ambition's gory hand, Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip, Woe, want, and murder o'er a land! Even in the peaceful rural vale, Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale, How pamper'd luxury, flattery by her side, The parasite empoisoning her ear. With all the servile wretches in the rear, Looks o'er proud property, extended wide; And eyes the simple rustic hind, Whose toil upholds the glittering show, A creature of another kind, Some coarser substance, unrefin'd, Placed for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, below. Where, where is love's fond, tender throe, With lordly honour's lofty brow, The powers you proudly own? Is there, beneath love's noble name, Can harbour, dark, the selfish aim, To bless himself alone! Mark maiden innocence a prey To love-pretending snares, This boasted honour turns away, Shunning soft pity's rising sway, Regardless of the tears and unavailing prayers! Perhaps this hour, in misery's squalid nest, She strains your infant to her joyless breast, And with a mother's fears shrinks at the rocking blast! Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down, Feel not a want but what yourselves create, Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate, Whom friends and fortune quite disown! Ill satisfied keen nature's clamorous call, Stretched on his straw he lays himself to sleep, While through the ragged roof and chinky wall, Chill o'er his slumbers piles the drifty heap! Think on the dungeon's grim confine, Where guilt and poor misfortune pine! Guilt, erring man, relenting view! But shall thy legal rage pursue The wretch, already crushed low By cruel fortune's undeserved blow? Affliction's sons are brothers in distress, A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!"

I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer Shook off the pouthery snaw, And hailed the morning with a cheer— A cottage-rousing craw!

But deep this truth impressed my mind— Through all his works abroad, The heart benevolent and kind The most resembles GOD.

* * * * *



XIII.

REMORSE.

A FRAGMENT.

["I entirely agree," says Burns, "with the author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Remorse is the most painful sentiment that can embitter the human bosom; an ordinary pitch of fortitude may bear up admirably well, under those calamities, in the procurement of which we ourselves have had no hand; but when our follies or crimes have made us wretched, to bear all with manly firmness, and at the same time have a proper penitential sense of our misconduct, is a glorious effort of self-command."]

Of all the numerous ills that hurt our peace, That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish, Beyond comparison the worst are those That to our folly or our guilt we owe. In every other circumstance, the mind Has this to say, 'It was no deed of mine;' But when to all the evil of misfortune This sting is added—'Blame thy foolish self!' Or worser far, the pangs of keen remorse; The torturing, gnawing consciousness of guilt,— Of guilt, perhaps, where we've involved others; The young, the innocent, who fondly lov'd us, Nay, more, that very love their cause of ruin! O burning hell! in all thy store of torments, There's not a keener lash! Lives there a man so firm, who, while his heart Feels all the bitter horrors of his crime, Can reason down its agonizing throbs; And, after proper purpose of amendment, Can firmly force his jarring thoughts to peace? O, happy! happy! enviable man! O glorious magnanimity of soul!

* * * * *



XIV.

THE JOLLY BEGGARS.

A CANTATA.

[This inimitable poem, unknown to Currie and unheardof while the poet lived, was first given to the world, with other characteristic pieces, by Mr. Stewart of Glasgow, in the year 1801. Some have surmised that it is not the work of Burns; but the parentage is certain: the original manuscript at the time of its composition, in 1785, was put into the hands of Mr. Richmond of Mauchline, and afterwards given by Burns himself to Mr. Woodburn, factor of the laird of Craigen-gillan; the song of "For a' that, and a' that" was inserted by the poet, with his name, in the Musical Museum of February, 1790. Cromek admired, yet did not, from overruling advice, print it in the Reliques, for which he was sharply censured by Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review. The scene of the poem is in Mauchline, where Poosie Nancy had her change-house. Only one copy in the handwriting of Burns is supposed to exist; and of it a very accurate fac-simile has been given.]

RECITATIVO.

When lyart leaves bestrow the yird, Or wavering like the bauckie-bird, Bedim cauld Boreas' blast; When hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte And infant frosts begin to bite, In hoary cranreuch drest; Ae night at e'en a merry core O' randie, gangrel bodies, In Poosie-Nansie's held the splore, To drink their orra duddies: Wi' quaffing and laughing, They ranted an' they sang; Wi' jumping and thumping, The vera girdle rang.

First, neist the fire, in auld red rags, Ane sat, weel brac'd wi' mealy bags, And knapsack a' in order; His doxy lay within his arm, Wi' usquebae an' blankets warm— She blinket on her sodger: An' ay he gies the tozie drab The tither skelpin' kiss, While she held up her greedy gab Just like an aumous dish. Ilk smack still, did crack still, Just like a cadger's whip, Then staggering and swaggering He roar'd this ditty up—

AIR.

Tune—"Soldiers' Joy."

I am a son of Mars, Who have been in many wars, And show my cuts and scars Wherever I come; This here was for a wench, And that other in a trench, When welcoming the French At the sound of the drum. Lal de daudle, &c.

My 'prenticeship I past Where my leader breath'd his last, When the bloody die was cast On the heights of Abram; I served out my trade When the gallant game was play'd, And the Moro low was laid At the sound of the drum. Lal de daudle, &c.

I lastly was with Curtis, Among the floating batt'ries, And there I left for witness An arm and a limb; Yet let my country need me, With Elliot to head me, I'd clatter on my stumps At the sound of a drum. Lal de dandle, &c.

And now tho' I must beg, With a wooden arm and leg, And many a tatter'd rag Hanging over my bum I'm as happy with my wallet, My bottle and my callet, As when I used in scarlet To follow a drum. Lal de daudle, &c.

What tho' with hoary locks I must stand the winter shocks, Beneath the woods and rocks Oftentimes for a home, When the tother bag I sell, And the tother bottle tell, I could meet a troop of hell, At the sound of a drum. Lal de daudle, &c.

RECITATIVO.

He ended; and kebars sheuk Aboon the chorus roar; While frighted rattons backward leuk, And seek the benmost bore; A fairy fiddler frae the neuk, He skirl'd out—encore! But up arose the martial Chuck, And laid the loud uproar.

AIR.

Tune—"Soldier laddie."

I once was a maid, tho' I cannot tell when, And still my delight is in proper young men; Some one of a troop of dragoons was my daddie, No wonder I'm fond of a sodger laddie. Sing, Lal de dal, &c.

The first of my loves was a swaggering blade, To rattle the thundering drum was his trade; His leg was so tight, and his cheek was so ruddy, Transported I was with my sodger laddie. Sing, Lal de dal, &c.

But the godly old chaplain left him in the lurch, The sword I forsook for the sake of the church; He ventur'd the soul, and I risk'd the body, 'Twas then I prov'd false to my sodger laddie. Sing, Lal de dal, &c.

Full soon I grew sick of my sanctified sot, The regiment at large for a husband I got; From the gilded spontoon to the fife I was ready, I asked no more but a sodger laddie. Sing, Lal de dal, &c.

But the peace it reduc'd me to beg in despair, Till I met my old boy in a Cunningham fair; His rags regimental they flutter'd so gaudy, My heart is rejoic'd at my sodger laddie. Sing, Lal de dal, &c.

And now I have liv'd—I know not how long, And still I can join in a cup or a song; But whilst with both hands I can hold the glass steady, Here's to thee, my hero, my sodger laddie. Sing, Lal de dal, &c.

RECITATIVO.

Poor Merry Andrew in the neuk, Sat guzzling wi' a tinkler hizzie; They mind't na wha the chorus teuk, Between themselves they were sae busy: At length wi' drink and courting dizzy He stoitered up an' made a face; Then turn'd, an' laid a smack on Grizzie, Syne tun'd his pipes wi' grave grimace.

AIR.

Tune—"Auld Sir Symon."

Sir Wisdom's a fool when he's fou, Sir Knave is a fool in a session; He's there but a 'prentice I trow, But I am a fool by profession.

My grannie she bought me a beuk, And I held awa to the school; I fear I my talent misteuk, But what will ye hae of a fool?

For drink I would venture my neck, A hizzie's the half o' my craft, But what could ye other expect, Of ane that's avowedly daft?

I ance was ty'd up like a stirk, For civilly swearing and quaffing; I ance was abused in the kirk, Fer touzling a lass i' my daffin.

Poor Andrew that tumbles for sport, Let naebody name wi' a jeer; There's ev'n I'm tauld i' the court A tumbler ca'd the premier.

Observ'd ye, yon reverend lad Maks faces to tickle the mob; He rails at our mountebank squad, Its rivalship just i' the job.

And now my conclusion I'll tell, For faith I'm confoundedly dry; The chiel that's a fool for himsel', Gude L—d! he's far dafter than I.

RECITATIVO.

Then neist outspak a raucle carlin, Wha kent fu' weel to cleek the sterling, For monie a pursie she had hooked, And had in mony a well been ducked. Her dove had been a Highland laddie, But weary fa' the waefu' woodie! Wi' sighs and sobs she thus began To wail her braw John Highlandman.

AIR.

Tune—"O an ye were dead, guidman."

A Highland lad my love was born, The Lalland laws he held in scorn; But he still was faithfu' to his clan, My gallant braw John Highlandman.

CHORUS.

Sing, hey my braw John Highlandman! Sing, ho my braw John Highlandman! There's not a lad in a' the lan' Was match for my John Highlandman.

With his philibeg an' tartan plaid, An' gude claymore down by his side, The ladies' hearts he did trepan, My gallant braw John Highlandman. Sing, hey, &c.

We ranged a' from Tweed to Spey, An' liv'd like lords and ladies gay; For a Lalland face he feared none, My gallant braw John Highlandman. Sing, hey, &c.

They banished him beyond the sea, But ere the bud was on the tree, Adown my cheeks the pearls ran, Embracing my John Highlandman. Sing, hey, &c.

But, och! they catch'd him at the last, And bound him in a dungeon fast; My curse upon them every one, They've hang'd my braw John Highlandman. Sing, hey, &c.

And now a widow, I must mourn, The pleasures that will ne'er return: No comfort but a hearty can, When I think on John Highlandman. Sing, hey, &c.

RECITATIVO.

A pigmy scraper, wi' his fiddle, Wha us'd at trysts and fairs to driddle, Her strappan limb and gausy middle He reach'd na higher, Had hol'd his heartie like a riddle, An' blawn't on fire.

Wi' hand on hainch, an' upward e'e, He croon'd his gamut, one, two, three, Then in an Arioso key, The wee Apollo Set off wi' Allegretto glee His giga solo.

AIR.

Tune—"Whistle o'er the lave o't."

Let me ryke up to dight that tear, And go wi' me and be my dear, And then your every care and fear May whistle owre the lave o't.

CHORUS.

I am a fiddler to my trade, An' a' the tunes that e'er I play'd, The sweetest still to wife or maid, Was whistle owre the lave o't.

At kirns and weddings we'se be there, And O! sae nicely's we will fare; We'll house about till Daddie Care Sings whistle owre the lave o't I am, &c.

Sae merrily the banes we'll byke, And sun oursells about the dyke, And at our leisure, when ye like, We'll whistle owre the lave o't. I am, &c.

But bless me wi' your heav'n o' charms, And while I kittle hair on thairms, Hunger, cauld, and a' sic harms, May whistle owre the lave o't. I am, &c.

RECITATIVO.

Her charms had struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, And draws a roosty rapier— He swoor by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he wad from that time forth Relinquish her for ever.

Wi' ghastly e'e, poor tweedle-dee Upon his hunkers bended, And pray'd for grace wi' ruefu' face, And sae the quarrel ended. But tho' his little heart did grieve When round the tinkler prest her, He feign'd to snirtle in his sleeve, When thus the caird address'd her:

AIR.

Tune—"Clout the Caudron."

My bonny lass, I work in brass, A tinkler is my station: I've travell'd round all Christian ground In this my occupation: I've taen the gold, an' been enrolled In many a noble sqadron: But vain they search'd, when off I march'd To go and clout the caudron. I've taen the gold, &c.

Despise that shrimp, that wither'd imp, Wi' a' his noise and caprin, And tak a share wi' those that bear The budget and the apron. And by that stoup, my faith and houp, An' by that dear Kilbaigie,[5] If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant, May I ne'er weet my craigie. An' by that stoup, &c.