The Whigs come on like Ocean's roar, Lo, from the shades of Death's deep night, Departed Whigs enjoy the fight, And think on former daring! The muffled murtherer of Charles 2 Nor wanting ghosts of Tory fame; 8 Bold Scrimgeour follows gallant Grahame,* Auld Covenanters shiver; Forgive, forgive, much-wronged Montrose ! While death and hell engulf thy foes, Thou liv'st on high for ever! Still o'er the field the combat burns; 1 The "Bullers of Buchan is an appellation given to a tremendous rocky recess on the Aberdeenshire coast, near Peterhead having an opening to the sea, while the top is open. The sea, constantly raging in it, gives it the appearance of a pot or boiler, and hence the name. 2 The masked executioner of Charles I. 8 John, Earl of Dundee, noted for his zeal and sufferings in the cause of the Stuarts during the time of the Commonwealth. 4 The great Marquis of Montrose. For woman's wit, or strength of man, The Tory ranks are broken. O that my e'en were flowing burns! Her darling cub's undoing! That I might greet, that I might cry, brooks weep What Whig but wails the good Sir James- Not Pulteney's wealth can Pulteney save, Thou, Pitt, shall rue this overthrow, Now Fox and Sheridan, rejoice! For your poor friend, the Bard afar, 1 Stuart of Hillside. Closeburn MS. . So when the storm the forest rends, And sober chirps securely. Additional verse in Closeburn MS. Now for my friends' and brothers' sakes, I pray with holy fire Lord, send a rough-shod troop of hell ON CAPTAIN MATTHEW HENDERSON, A GENTLEMAN WHO HELD THE PATENT FOR HIS HONOURS IMMEDIATELY FROM ALMIGHTY GOD. "Should the poor be flattered?". - SHAKESPEARE. But now his radiant course is run, His soul was like the glorious sun, Matthew Henderson appears to have been a 66 ma about town," a kind-hearted, life-enjoying person, whose agreeable manners perhaps often made him welcome at tables better furnished than his own. He had been one of Burns's good-fellow friends during the time he spent in Edinburgh, and he appears as a subscriber for four copies of the second edition of our bard's poems - not, however, as Captain Matthew Henderson - but as "Matthew Henderson, Esq.," the "Captain" being, we understand, a mere pet-name for the man among his friends, adopted most likely from the position he held in some convivial society. Burns speaks of the poem as 66 a tribute to the memory of a man I loved much.” O DEATH! thou tyrant fell and bloody! O'er hurcheon hides, And like stockfish come o'er his studdie Wi' thy auld sides! He's gane! he's gane! he's frae us torn, Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn, Frae man exiled! Ye hills! near neibors o' the starns, rope smithy hedgehog anvil stars eagles Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns, groves Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens! wood-pigeon Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens, Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea! In scented bowers! Ye roses on your thorny tree, The first o' flowers! At dawn, when every grassy blade purling leaps waterfall At even, when beans their fragrance shed, I' th' rustling gale, Ye maukins whiddin' through the hares skipping glade, Come join my wail! Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood! Ye whistling plover! cloud |