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I've been at drucken1 writers' feasts,
Nay, been bitch fou 'mang godly priests;
(Wi' rev'rence be it spoken !)

I've even join'd the honour'd jorum
When mighty squireships o' the quorum
Their hydra drouth did sloken.

But wi' a lord !-stand out, my shin:
A lord-a peer-an earl's son !—

Up higher yet, my bonnet !
And sic a lord!-lang Scotch ells twa,
Our peerage he o'erlooks them a',
As I look o'er my sonnet.

But, oh! for Hogarth's magic power!
To show Sir Bardie's willyart glower,2

And how he stared and stammer'd!
When goavan,3 as if led wi' branks,
And stumpin' on his ploughman shanks,
He in the parlour hammer'd.

To meet good Stewart little pain is,
Or Scotia's sacred Demosthenes ;

Thinks I, they are but men !

But Burns, my lord-guid God! I doited!"
My knees on ane anither knoited, "
As faultering I gaed ben!"

I sidling shelter'd in a nook,
And at his lordship steal't a look,

Like some portentous omen;
Except good sense and social glee,
And (what surprised me) modesty,

I marked nought uncommon.

I watch'd the symptoms o' the great,
The gentle pride, the lordly state,
The arrogant assuming;
The fient a pride, nae pride had he,
Nor sauce, nor state, that I could see,
Mair than an honest ploughman.

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ADDRESS TO EDINBURGH.

WRITING to his friend, William Chalmers, the poet says:-"I enclose you two poems, which I have carded and spun since I passed Glenbuck. 'Fair Burnet' is the heavenly Miss Burnet, daughter of Lord Monboddo, at whose house I have had the honour to be more than once. There has not been anything nearly like her in all the combinations of beauty, grace, and goodness the great Creator has formed, since Milton's Eve on the first day of her existence!

EDINA! Scotia's darling seat!

All hail thy palaces and towers,
Where once beneath a monarch's feet
Sat Legislation's sovereign powers!
From marking wildly-scatter'd flowers,
As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,
And singing, lone, the lingering hours,
I shelter in thy honour'd shade.

Here wealth still swells the golden tide,
As busy Trade his labour plies;
There Architecture's noble pride
Bids elegance and splendour rise;
Here Justice, from her native skies,
High wields her balance and her rod
There Learning, with his eagle eyes,
Seeks Science in her coy abode.

Thy sons, Edina ! social, kind,
With open arms the stranger hail;
Their views enlarged, their liberal mind,
Above the narrow, rural vale;
Attentive still to Sorrow's wail,

Or modest Merit's silent claim;
And never may their sources fail!

And never envy blot their name!

Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn,
Gay as the gilded summer sky,
Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn,
Dear as the raptured thrill of joy!
Fair Burnet strikes th' adoring eye,
Heaven's beauties on my fancy shine;
I see the Sire of Love on high,

And own His work indeed divine.

There, watching high the least alarms,

Thy rough, rude fortress gleams afar;
Like some bold veteran, gray in arms,
And mark'd with many a seamy scar:
The ponderous wall and massy bar,
Grim-rising o'er the rugged rock,
Have oft withstood assailing war,
And oft repell'd the invader's shock.

With awe-struck thought, and pitying tears,
I view that noble, stately dome,
Where Scotia's kings of other years,

Famed heroes! had their royal home:
Alas, how changed the times to come!
Their royal name low in the dust!
Their hapless race wild-wandering roam!
Though rigid law cries out, 'Twas just.
Wild beats my heart to trace your steps,
Whose ancestors, in days of yore,
Through hostile ranks and ruin'd gaps
Old Scotia's bloody lion bore:
Even I who sing in rustic lore,

Haply, my sires have left their shed,
And faced grim Danger's loudest roar,
Bold-following where your fathers led!
Edina! Scotia's darling seat!

All hail thy palaces and towers,
Where once beneath a monarch's feet
Sat Legislation's sovereign powers!
From marking wildly-scatter'd flowers,
As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd,
And singing, lone, the lingering hours,
I shelter in thy honour'd shade.

THE POET'S WELCOME TO HIS ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.* WE cannot take this effusion as giving a true index of the poet's feelings in the circumstances in question. Lockhart says:-"To wave ('in his own language') the quantum of the sin,' he who, two years afterwards, wrote the 'Cotter's Saturday Night' had not, we may be sure, hardened his heart to the thought of bringing additional sorrow and unexpected shame to the fireside of a widowed mother. But his false pride recoiled from letting his jovial associates guess how little he was able to drown the whispers of the still small voice;' and the fermenting bitterness of a mind ill at ease within itself escaped, (as may be too often traced in the history of satirists,) in the shape of angry sarcasms against others, who, whatever their private errors might be, had at least done him no wrong. It is impossible not to smile at one item of consolation which Burns proposes to himself on this occasion:-

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The mair they talk, I'm kenn'd the better;
E'en let them clash!

This is indeed a singular manifestation of 'the last infirmity of noble minds.'”
THOU'S Welcome, wean! mishanter1 fa' me,
If ought of thee, or of thy mammy,

1 Misfortune.

*The subject of these verses was the poet's illegitimate daughter whom, in "The Inventory," he styles his

"Sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess."

She grew up to womanhood, was married, and had a family. Her death is thus announced in the Scots Magazine, December 8, 1817:-Died Elizabeth Burns, wife of Mr. John Bishop, overseer at Polkemmet, near Whitburn. She was the daughter of the celebrated Robert Burns, and the subject of some of his most beautiful lines.

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Wee image of my bonny Betty,
I fatherly will kiss and daut thee,
As dear and near my heart I set thee
Wi' as guid will

As a' the priests had seen me get thee
That's out o' hell.

What though they ca' me fornicator,
And tease my name in kintra clatter :1
The mair they talk I'm kenn'd the better,
E'en let them clash! 2

An auld wife's tongue's a feckless3 matter
To gie ane fash.*

Sweet fruit o' mony a merry dint,

My funny toil is now a' tint,

Sin' thou came to the warld asklent, 5

Which fools may scoff at ;

In my last plack thy part's be in't-
The better half o't.

And if thou be what I wad hae thee,
And tak the counsel I shall gie thee,
A lovin' father I'll be to thee,

If thou be spared:

Through a' thy childish years I'll ee thee,
And think't weel wared.

Guid grant that thou may aye inherit
Thy mither's person, grace, and merit,
And thy poor worthless daddy's spirit,
Without his failin's:
'Twill please me mair to see and hear it,
Than stockit mailins.6

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Yet deviating, own I must,
For so approving me.

But kind still, I mind still
The giver in the gift,
I'll bless her, and wiss her
A Friend above the lift.1

TO MISS LOGAN,

with Beattie's poems as a new-year's GIFT, JAN. 1, 1787.

MISS SUSAN LOGAN was the sister of the Major Logan to whom Burns wrote a rhymed epistle.

AGAIN the silent wheels of time

Their annual round have driven,

And you, though scarce in maiden prime,
Are so much nearer heaven.

No gifts have I from Indian coasts
The infant year to hail;

I send you more than India boasts,
In Edwin's simple tale.

Our sex with guile and faithless love
Is charged, perhaps, too true;
But may, dear maid, each lover prove
An Edwin still to you!

VERSES

INTENDED TO BE WRITTEN BELOW A NOBLE EARL'S PICTure.

'THE enclosed stanzas," said the poet, in a letter to the Earl of Glencairn, "I tended to write below a picture or profile of your lordship, could I have been happy as to procure one with anything of a likeness."

WHOSE is that noble, dauntless brow?

And whose that eye of fire?

And whose that generous princely mien
Even rooted foes admire?

Stranger, to justly show that brow,
And mark that eye of fire,

Would take His hand, whose vernal tints
His other works admire.

Bright as a cloudless summer sun,
With stately port he moves;
His guardian seraph eyes with awe
The noble ward he loves.

Among the illustrious Scottish sons
That chief thou mayst discern;
Mark Scotia's fond returning eye-
It dwells upon Glencairn.

1 Sky.

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