O that my een were flowing burns!
My voice a lioness that mourns

Her darling cubs' undoing!

That I might greet, that I might cry,

While Tories fall, while Tories fly,

And furious Whigs pursuing!

What Whig but melts for good Sir James ?
Dear to his country by the names

Friend, patron, benefactor!

Not Pulteney's wealth can Pulteney save!
And Hopeton falls, the generous brave!
And Stewart, bold as Hector.

Thou, Pitt, shalt rue this overthrow;
And Thurlow growl a curse of woe;

And Melville melt in wailing!

How Fox and Sheridan rejoice!

And Burke shall sing, O Prince, arise,

Thy power is all-prevailing!

For your poor friend, the Bard, afar

He only hears and sees the war,

A cool spectator purely !

So, when the storm the forest rends,

The robin in the hedge descends,

And sober chirps securely.

EPISTLE TO MAJOR LOGAN.1

HAIL, thairm-inspirin', rattlin' Willie!
Though Fortune's road be rough an' hilly
To every fiddling, rhyming billie,

We never heed,

But tak it like the unback'd filly,

Proud o' her speed.

When idly goavan3 whyles we saunter,
Yirr fancy barks, awa' we canter

Uphill, down brae, till some mischanter.5

Some black bog-hole,

Arrests us, then the scathe an' banter

We're forced to thole."

1 Major Logan was a skilful player on the violin.

• Lively.

3 Walking without an object.
6 Injury.

5 Accident.

2 Fiddle-string.

7 To bear.

Hale be your heart! Hale be your fiddle!
Lang may your elbuck jink and diddle,
To cheer you through the weary widdle
O' this wild warl',

Until you on a crummock driddle1

A grey-hair'd carl.

Come wealth, come poortith, late or soon,
Heaven send your heart-strings aye in tune,
And screw your temper-pins aboon,

A fifth or mair,

The melancholious, lazie croon

O' cankrie care.

May still your life from day to day
Nae "lente largo" in the play,
But "allegretto forte" gay

Harmonious flow:

A sweeping, kindling, bauld strathspey-
Encore! Bravo!

A blessing on the cheery gang
Wha dearly like a jig or sang,
An' never think o' right an' wrang
By square an' rule,

But as the clegs2 o' feeling stang3

Are wise or fool.

4

My hand-waled curse keep hard in chase
The harpy, hoodock, purse-proud race,
Wha count on poortith as disgrace-

Their tuneless hearts!

May fire-side discords jar a base

To a their parts!

But come, your hand, my careless brither,
I' th' ither warl'-if there's anither,
An' that there is I've little swither5

About the matter,

We cheek for chow shall jog thegither,
I'se ne'er bid better.

We've faults and failings-granted clearly,
We're frail backsliding mortals merely,

1 Hobble on a stick.

2 Gadflies.

3 Sting.

• Miserly.

5 Doubt.

Eve's bonny squad priests wyte' them sheerly
For our grand fa';

But still, but still, I like them dearly

God bless them a'!

Ochon for poor Castalian drinkers,
When they fa' foul o' earthly jinkers,
The witching curs'd delicious blinkers

Hae put me hyte,2

And gart me weet my waukrife winkers,3

Wi' girnin spite.

But by yon moon !-and that's high swearin'-
An' every star within my hearin'!'

An' by her een wha was a dear ane!

I'll ne'er forget;

I hope to gie the jads1 a clearin'

In fair play yet.

My loss I mourn, but not repent it,
I'll seek my pursie whare I tint it,
Ance to the Indies I were wonted,

Some cantraip hour,

By some sweet elf I'll yet be dinted,

Then, vive l'amour!

Faites mes baissemains respectueuses,
To sentimental sister Susie,

An' honest Lucky; no to roose ye,

Ye may be proud,

That sic a couple fate allows ye

To grace your blood.

Nae mair at present can I measure,

An' trowth my rhymin' ware's nae treasure;
But when in Ayr, some half-hour's leisure,

Be't light, be't dark,

Sir Bard will do himsel' the pleasure

Mossgiel, 30th October, 1786.

To call at Park.

ROBERT BURNS.

1 Blame.

2 Frantic.

4 Jades.

5 Lost.

3 Wet my sleepless eyes. 6 Charmed.

EPITAPH ON THE POET'S DAUGHTER.1

HERE lies a rose, a budding rose,
Blasted before its bloom;

Whose innocence did sweets disclose
Beyond that flower's perfume.
To those who for her loss are grieved,
This consolation's given-
She's from a world of woe relieved,
And blooms a rose in Heaven.

EPITAPH ON GABRIEL RICHARDSON.2

Here Brewer Gabriel's fire's extinct,
And empty all his barrels :

He's blest-if, as he brew'd, he drink
In upright honest morals,

EPISTLE TO HUGH PARKER.3

In this strange land, this uncouth clime,
A land unknown to prose or rhyme;

Where words ne'er crost the Muse's heckles,*
Nor limpet in poetic shackles ;

A land that prose did never view it,

Except when drunk he stachert through it;

1 These lines are said to have been written by Burns on the loss of his daughter, who died in the autumn of 1795, and of whom he thus speaks in his letter to Mrs. Dunlop, from Dumfries, January 31, 1796: "These many months you have been two packets in my debt-what sin of ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend I am utterly at a loss to guess. Alas! madam, ill can I afford, at this time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my pleasures. I have lately drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my only daughter and darling child, and that at a distance too, and so rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock when I became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful; until, after many weeks of sick bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room, and once indeed have been before my own door in the street.

"When pleasure fascinates the mental sight,
Affliction purifies the visual ray,

Religion hails the drear, the untried night,

That shuts, for ever shuts, life's doubtful day."

2 A brewer in Dumfries.

3 A merchant of Kilmarnock, and a generous patron of Burns at the beginning of his poetical career.

* Instrument for dressing flax.

Here, ambush'd by the chimla1 cheek,
Hid in an atmosphere of reek,
I hear a wheel thrum i' the neuk,
I hear it-for in vain I leuk.-
The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel,
Enhusked by a fog infernal:
Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures,
I sit and count my sins by chapters;
For life and spunk, like ither Christians,
I'm dwindled down to mere existence,
Wi' nae converse but Gallowa' bodies,
Wi' nae kend face but Jenny Geddes.
Jenny, my Pegasean pride!

Dowie2 she saunters down Nithside,
And aye a westlin leuk she throws,
While tears hap o'er her auld brown nose!
Was it for this, wi' canny care,

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

ROBERT BURNS.

1 Fire-place.

2 Weary.

3 Raise.