"Where, where is love's fond, tender throe, • With lordly honour's lofty brow,

• The pow'rs 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 pray’rs ! • Perhaps, this hour, in mis’ry's squalid nest,

She strains your infant to her joyless breast, And with a mother's fears shrinks at the rock.

a

ing 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-satisfy’d, keen nature's clam'rous call,

‘Stretch'don his straw he lays himself to sleep, · While thro' 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

I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer

Shook off the pouthery snaw,
And hail'd the morning with a cheer,

A cottage-rousing craw.

But deep this truth impress'd my mind

Thro' all his works abroad, The heart benevolent and kind

The most resembles God.

EPISTLE

EPISTLE

TO

DAVIE,

А

BROTHER POET.*

January

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

* David Sillar, one of the club at Tarbolton, and author of a Volume of Poems in the Scottish dialect. E.

While frosty winds blaw in the drift,

Ben to the chimla lug,
I grudge a wee the great folk's 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 pow'r,
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:

• Mair spier na, no fear na, Auld age ne'er mind a feg, The last o't, the warst o't,

Is only for to beg.

*

III.

* Ramsay

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

Of 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 can we fa'.

IV.

What tho', like commoners of air,
We wander out, we know not where,

But either house or hal'?
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