The Poet’s Progress
A Poem In Embryo
THOU, Nature, partial Nature, I arraign;
Of thy caprice maternal I complain.
The peopled fold thy kindly care have found,
The hornèd bull, tremendous, spurns the ground;
The lordly lion has enough and more, 5
The forest trembles at his very roar;
Thou giv’st the ass his hide, the snail his shell,
The puny wasp, victorious, guards his cell.
Thy minions, kings defend, controul devour,
In all th’ omnipotence of rule and power: 10
Foxes and statesmen subtle wiles ensure;
The cit and polecat stink, and are secure:
Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug,
The priest and hedgehog, in their robes, are snug:
E’en silly women have defensive arts, 15
Their eyes, their tongues — and nameless other parts.
But O thou cruel stepmother and hard,
To thy poor fenceless, naked child, the Bard!
A thing unteachable in worldly skill,
And half an idiot too, more helpless still: 20
No heels to bear him from the op’ning dun,
No claws to dig, his hated sight to shun:
No horns, but those by luckless Hymen worn,
And those, alas! not Amalthea’s horn:
No nerves olfact’ry, true to Mammon’s foot,
25
Or grunting, grub sagacious, evil’s root:
The silly sheep that wanders wild astray,
Is not more friendless, is not more a prey;
Vampyre-booksellers drain him to the heart,
And viper-critics cureless venom dart. 30
Critics! appll’d I venture on the name,
Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame,
Bloody dissectors, worse than ten Monroes,
He hacks to teach, they mangle to expose:
By blockhead’s daring into madness stung, 35
His heart by wanton, causeless malice wrung,
His well-won ways-than life itself more dear —
By miscreants torn who ne’er one sprig must wear;
Foil’d, bleeding, tortur’d in th’ unequal strife,
The hapless Poet flounces on through life, 40
Till, fled each hope that once his bosom fired,
And fled each Muse that glorious once inspir’d,
Low-sunk in squalid, unprotected age,
Dead even resentment for his injur’d page,
He heeds no more the ruthless critics’ rage. 45
So by some hedge the generous steed deceas’d,
For half-starv’d, snarling curs a dainty feast;
By toil and famine worn to skin and bone,
Lies, senseless of each tugging bitch’s son.
• • • • • •
A little upright, pert, tart, tripping wight, 50
And still his precious self his dear delight;
Who loves his own smart shadow in the streets,
Better than e’er the fairest she he meets;
Much specious lore, but little understood,
(Veneering oft outshines the solid wood), 55
His solid sense, by inches you must tell,
But mete his cunning by the Scottish ell!
A man of fashion too, he made his tour,
Learn’d “vive la bagatelle et vive l’amour;”
So travell’d monkeys their grimace improve, 60
Polish their grin-nay, sigh for ladies’ love!
His meddling vanity, a busy fiend,
Still making work his selfish craft must mend.
• • • • • •
• • • • • •
• • • Crochallan came,
The old cock’d hat, the brown surtout — the same; 65
His grisly beard just bristling in its might —
‘Twas four long nights and days from shaving-night;
His uncomb’d, hoary locks, wild-staring, thatch’d
A head, for thought profound and clear, unmatch’d;
Yet, tho’ his caustic wit was biting-rude, 70
His heart was warm, benevolent and good.
• • • • • •
O Dulness, portion of the truly blest!
Calm, shelter’d haven of eternal rest!
Thy sons ne’er madden in the fierce extremes
Of Fortune’s polar frost, or torrid beams; 75
If mantling high she fills the golden cup,
With sober, selfish ease they sip it up;
Conscious the bounteous meed they well deserve,
They only wonder “some folks” do not starve!
The grave, sage hern thus easy picks his frog, 80
And thinks the mallard a sad worthless dog.
When disappointment snaps the thread of Hope,
When, thro’ disastrous night, they darkling grope,
With deaf endurance sluggishly they bear,
And just conclude that “fools are Fortune’s care:” 85
So, heavy, passive to the tempest’s shocks,
Strong on the sign-post stands the stupid ox.
Not so the idle Muses’ mad-cap train,
Not such the workings of their moon-struck brain;
In equanimity they never dwell, 90
By turns in soaring heaven, or vaulted hell!
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
243.
Elegy on the Year 1788
FOR lords or kings I dinna mourn,
E’en let them die-for that they’re born:
But oh! prodigious to reflec’!
A Towmont, sirs, is gane to wreck!
O Eighty-eight, in thy sma’ space, 5
What dire events hae taken place!
Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us!
In what a pickle thou has left us!
The Spanish empire’s tint a head,
And my auld teethless, Bawtie’s dead: 10
The tulyie’s teugh ‘tween Pitt and Fox,
And ‘tween our Maggie’s twa wee cocks;
The tane is game, a bluidy devil,
But to the hen-birds unco civil;
The tither’s something dour o’ treadin, 15
But better stuff ne’er claw’d a middin.
Ye ministers, come mount the poupit,
An’ cry till ye be hearse an’ roupit,
For Eighty-eight, he wished you weel,
An’ gied ye a’ baith gear an’ meal; 20
E’en monc a plack, and mony a peck,
Ye ken yoursels, for little feck!
Ye bonie lasses, dight your e’en,
For some o’ you hae tint a frien’;
In Eighty-eight, ye ken, was taen, 25
What ye’ll ne’er hae to gie again.
Observe the very nowt an’ sheep,
How dowff an’ daviely they creep;
Nay, even the yirth itsel’ does cry,
For E’nburgh wells are grutten dry. 30
O Eighty-nine, thou’s but a bairn,
An’ no owre auld, I hope, to learn!
Thou beardless boy, I pray tak care,
Thou now hast got thy Daddy’s chair;
Nae handcuff’d, mizl’d, hap-shackl’d Regent, 35
But, like himsel, a full free agent,
Be sure ye follow out the plan
Nae waur than he did, honest man!
As muckle better as you can.
January, 1, 1789.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
244.
The Henpecked Husband
Chorus. — Robin shure in hairst,
I shure wi’ him.
Fient a heuk had I,
Yet I stack by him.
I GAED up to Dunse, 5
To warp a wab o’ plaiden,
At his daddie’s yett,
Wha met me but Robin:
Robin shure, &c.
Was na Robin bauld, 10
Tho’ I was a cotter,
Play’d me sic a trick,
An’ me the El’er’s dochter!
Robin shure, &c.
Robin promis’d me 15
A’ my winter vittle;
Fient haet he had but three
Guse-feathers and a whittle!
Robin shure, &c.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
245.
Versicles on Sign-Posts
CURS’D be the man, the poorest wretch in life,
The crouching vassal to a tyrant wife!
Who has no will but by her high permission,
Who has not sixpence but in her possession;
Who must to he, his dear friend’s secrets tell, 5
Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell.
Were such the wife had fallen to my part,
I’d break her spirit or I’d break her heart;
I’d charm her with the magic of a switch,
I’d kiss her maids, and kick the perverse b —— h. 10
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
1789
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
246.
Robin Shure in Hairst (Song)
HIS face with smile eternal drest,
Just like the Landlord’s to his Guest’s,
High as they hang with creaking din,
To index out the Country Inn.
He looked just as your sign-post Lions do, 5
With aspect fierce, and quite as harmless too.
—— —— ——
A head, pure, sinless quite of brain and soul,
The very image of a barber’s Poll;
It shews a human face, and wears a wig,
And looks, when well preserv’d, amazing big. 10
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
247.
Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive
DWELLER in yon dungeon dark,
Hangman of creation! mark,
Who in widow-weeds appears,
Laden with unhonour’d years,
Noosing with care a bursting purse, 5
Baited with many a deadly curse?
STROPHE
View the wither’d Beldam’s face;
Can thy keen inspection trace
Aught of Humanity’s sweet, melting grace?
Note that eye, ‘tis rheum o’erflows; 10
Pity’s flood there never rose,
See these hands ne’er stretched to save,
Hands that took, but never gave:
Keeper of Mammon’s iron chest,
Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest, 15
She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest!
ANTISTROPHE
Plunderer of Armies! lift thine eyes,
(A while forbear, ye torturing fiends;)
Seest thou whose step, unwilling, hither bends?
No fallen angel, hurl’d from upper skies; 20
‘Tis thy trusty quondam Mate,
Doom’d to share thy fiery fate;
She, tardy, hell-ward plies.
EPODE
And are they of no more avail,
Ten thousand glittering pounds a-year? 25
In other worlds can Mammon fail,
Omnipotent as he is here!
O, bitter mockery of the pompous bier,
While down the wretched Vital Part is driven!
The cave-lodged Beggar,with a conscience clear, 30
Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to Heaven.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
248.
Pegasus at Wanlockhead
WITH Pegasus upon a day,
Apollo, weary flying,
Through frosty hills the journey lay,
On foot the way was plying.
Poor slipshod giddy Pegasus 5
Was but a sorry walker;
To Vulcan then Apollo goes,
To get a frosty caulker.
Obliging Vulcan fell to work,
Threw by his coat and bonnet, 10
And did Sol’s business in a crack;
Sol paid him with a sonnet.
Ye Vulcan’s sons of Wanlockhead,
Pity my sad disaster;
My Pegasus is poorly shod, 15
I’ll pay you like my master.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
249.
Sappho Redivivus: A Fragment
BY all I lov’d, neglected and forgot,
No friendly face e’er lights my squalid cot;
Shunn’d, hated, wrong’d, unpitied, unredrest,
The mock’d quotation of the scorner’s jest!
Ev’n the poor súpport of my wretched life, 5
Snatched by the violence of legal strife.
Oft grateful for my very daily bread
To those my family’s once large bounty fed;
A welcome inmate at their homely fare,
My griefs, my woes, my sighs, my tears they share: 10
(Their vulgar souls unlike the souls refin’d,
The fashioned marble of the polished mind).
In vain would Prudence, with decorous sneer,
Point out a censuring world, and bid me fear;
Above the world, on wings of Love, I rise — 15
I know its worst, and can that worst despise;
Let Prudence’ direst bodements on me fall,
M[ontgomer]y, rich reward, o’erpays them all!
Mild zephyrs waft thee to life’s farthest shore,
Nor think of me and my distress more, — 20
Falsehood accurst! No! still I beg a place,
Still near thy heart some little, little trace:
For that dear trace the world I would resign:
O let me live, and die, and think it mine!
“I burn, I burn, as when thro’ ripen’d corn 25
By driving winds the crackling flames are borne;”
Now raving-wild, I curse that fatal night,
Then bless the hour that charm’d my guilty sight:
In vain the laws their feeble force oppose,
Chain’d at Love’s feet, they groan, his vanquish’d foes. 30
In vain Religion meets my shrinking eye,
I dare not combat, but I turn and fly:
Conscience in vain upbraids th’ unhallow’d fire,
Love grasps her scorpions — stifled they expire!
Reason drops headlong from his sacred throne, 35
Your dear idea reigns, and reigns alone;
Each thought intoxicated homage yields,
And riots wanton in forbidden fields.
By all on high adoring mortals know!
By all the conscious villain fears below! 40
By your dear self! — the last great oath I swear,
Not life, nor soul, were ever half so dear!
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
250.
She’s Fair and Fause (Song)
SHE’S fair and fause that causes my smart,
I lo’ed her meikle and lang;
She’s broken her vow, she’s broken my heart,
And I may e’en gae hang.
A coof cam in wi’ routh o’ gear, 5
And I hae tint my dearest dear;
But Woman is but warld’s gear,
Sae let the bonie lass gang.
Whae’er ye be that woman love,
To this be never blind; 10
Nae ferlie ‘tis tho’ fickle she prove,
A woman has’t by kind.
O Woman lovely, Woman fair!
An angel form’s faun to thy share,
‘Twad been o’er meikle to gi’en thee mair — 15
I mean an angel mind.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
251.
Impromptu Lines to Captain Riddell
On Returning a Newspaper.
YOUR News and Review, sir.
I’ve read through and through, sir,
With little admiring or blaming;
The Papers are barren
Of home-news or foreign, 5
No murders or rapes worth the naming.
Our friends, the Reviewers,
Those chippers and hewers,
Are judges of mortar and stone, sir;
But of meet or unmeet, 10
In a fabric complete,
I’ll boldly pronounce they are none, sir;
My goose-quill too rude is
To tell all your goodness
Bestow’d on your servant, the Poet; 15
Would to God I had one
Like a beam of the sun,
And then all the world, sir, should know it!
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
252.
Lines to John M’Murdo of Drumlanrig
Sent with some of the Author’s Poems.
O COULD I give thee India’s wealth,
As I this trifle send;
Because thy joy in both would be
To share them with a friend.
But golden sands did never grace 5
The Heliconian stream;
Then take what gold could never buy —
An honest bard’s esteem.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
253.
Rhyming Reply to a Note from Captain Riddell
DEAR SIR, at ony time or tide,
I’d rather sit wi’ you than ride,
Though ‘twere wi’ royal Geordie:
And trowth, your kindness, soon and late,
Aft gars me to mysel’ look blate — 5
The Lord in Heav’n reward ye!
R. BURNS.
ELLISLAND.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
254.
Caledonia: A Ballad
Tune— “Caledonian Hunts’ Delight” of Mr. Gow.
THERE was once a day, but old Time wasythen young,
That brave Caledonia, the chief of her line,
From some of your northern deities sprung,
(Who knows not that brave Caledonia’s divine?)
From Tweed to the Orcades was her domain, 5
To hunt, or to pasture, or do what she would:
Her heav’nly relations there fixed her reign,
And pledg’d her their godheads to warrant it good.
A lambkin in peace, but a lion in war,
The pride of her kindred, the heroine grew: 10
Her grandsire, old Odin, triumphantly swore, —
“Whoe’er shall provoke thee, th’ encounter shall rue!”
With tillage or pasture at times she would sport,
To feed her fair flocks by her green rustling corn;
But chiefly the woods were her fav’rite resort, 15
Her darling amusement, the hounds and the horn.
Long quiet she reigned; till thitherward steers
A flight of bold eagles from Adria’s strand:
Repeated, successive, for many long years,
They darken’d the air, and they plunder’d the land: 20
Their pounces were murder, and terror their cry,
They’d conquer’d and ruin’d a world beside;
She took to her hills, and her arrows let fly,
The daring invaders they fled or they died.
The Cameleon-Savage disturb’d her repose, 25
With tumult, disquiet, rebellion, and strife;
Provok’d beyond bearing, at last she arose,
And robb’d him at once of his hopes and his life:
The Anglian lion, the terror of France,
Oft prowling, ensanguin’d the Tweed’s silver flood; 30
But, taught by the bright Caledonian lance,
He learnèd to fear in his own native wood.
The fell Harpy-raven took wing from the north,
The scourge of the seas, and the dread of the shore;
The wild Scandinavian boar issued forth 35
To wanton in carnage and wallow in gore:
O’er countries and kingdoms their fury prevail’d,
No arts could appease them, no arms could repel;
But brave Caledonia in vain they assail’d,
As Largs well can witness, and Loncartie tell. 40
Thus bold, independent, unconquer’d, and free,
Her bright course of glory for ever shall run:
For brave Caledonia immortal must be;
I’ll prove it from Euclid as clear as the sun:
Rectangle-triangle, the figure we’ll chuse: 45
The upright is Chance, and old Time is the base;
But brave Caledonia’s the hypothenuse;
Then, ergo, she’ll match them, and match them always.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
255.
Verses to Miss Cruickshank
A very Young Lady
Written on the Blank Leaf of a Book, presented to her by the Author.
BEAUTEOUS Rosebud, young and gay,
Blooming in thy early May,
Never may’st thou, lovely flower,
Chilly shrink in sleety shower!
Never Boreas’ hoary path, 5
Never Eurus’ pois’nous breath,
Never baleful stellar lights,
Taint thee with untimely blights!
Never, never reptile thief
Riot on thy virgin leaf! 10
Nor even Sol too fiercely view
Thy bosom blushing still with dew!
May’st thou long, sweet crimson gem,
Richly deck thy native stem;
Till some ev’ning, sober, calm, 15
Dropping dews, and breathing balm,
While all around the woodland rings,
And ev’ry bird thy requiem sings;
Thou, amid the dirgeful sound,
Shed thy dying honours round, 20
And resign to parent Earth
The loveliest form she e’er gave birth.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
256.
Beware o’ Bonie Ann (Song)
YE gallants bright, I rede you right,
Beware o’ bonie Ann;
Her comely face sae fu’ o’ grace,
Your heart she will trepan:
Her een sae bright, like stars by night, 5
Her skin sae like the swan;
Sae jimply lac’d her genty waist,
That sweetly ye might span.
Youth, Grace, and Love attendant move,
And pleasure leads the van: 10
In a’ their charms, and conquering arms,
They wait on bonie Ann.
The captive bands may chain the hands,
But love enslaves the man:
Ye gallants braw, I rede you a’, 15
Beware o’ bonie Ann!
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
257.
Ode on the Departed Regency Bill
(March, 1789)
DAUGHTER of Chaos’ doting years,
Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears,
Whether thy airy, insubstantial shade
(The rights of sepulture now duly paid)
Spread abroad its hideous form 5
On the roaring civil storm,
Deafening din and warring rage
Factions wild with factions wage;
Or under-ground, deep-sunk, profound,
Among the demons of the earth, 10
With groans that make the mountains shake,
Thou mourn thy ill-starr’d, blighted birth;
Or in the uncreated Void,
Where seeds of future being fight,
With lessen’d step thou wander wide, 15
To greet thy Mother — Ancient Night.
And as each jarring, monster-mass is past,
Fond recollect what once thou wast:
In manner due, beneath this sacred oak,
Hear, Spirit, hear! thy presence I invoke! 20
By a Monarch’s heaven-struck fate,
By a disunited State,
By a generous Prince’s wrongs.
By a Senate’s strife of tongues,
By a Premier’s sullen pride, 25
Louring on the changing tide;
By dread Thurlow’s powers to awe
Rhetoric, blasphemy and law;
By the turbulent ocean —
A Nation’s commotion, 30
By the harlot-caresses
Of borough addresses,
By days few and evil,
(Thy portion, poor devil!)
By Power, Wealth, and Show, 35
(The Gods by men adored,)
By nameless Poverty,
(Their hell abhorred,)
By all they hope, by all they fear,
Hear! and appear! 40
Stare not on me, thou ghastly Power!
Nor, grim with chained defiance, lour:
No Babel-structure would I build
Where, order exil’d from his native sway,
Confusion may the REGENT-sceptre wield, 45
While all would rule and none obey:
Go, to the world of man relate
The story of thy sad, eventful fate;
And call presumptuous Hope to hear
And bid him check his blind career; 50
And tell the sore-prest sons of Care,
Never, never to despair!
Paint Charles’ speed on wings of fire,
The object of his fond desire,
Beyond his boldest hopes, at hand: 55
Paint all the triumph of the Portland Band;
Mark how they lift the joy-exulting voice,
And how their num’rous creditors rejoice;
But just as hopes to warm enjoyment rise,
Cry CONVALESCENCE! and the vision flies. 60
Then next pourtray a dark’ning twilight gloom,
Eclipsing sad a gay, rejoicing morn,
While proud Ambition to th’ untimely tomb
By gnashing, grim, despairing fiends is borne:
Paint ruin, in the shape of high D[undas] 65
Gaping with giddy terror o’er the brow;
In vain he struggles, the fates behind him press,
And clam’rous hell yawns for her prey below:
How fallen That, whose pride late scaled the skies!
And This, like Lucifer, no more to rise! 70
Again pronounce the powerful word;
See Day, triumphant from the night, restored.
Then know this truth, ye Sons of Men!
(Thus ends thy moral tale,)
Your darkest terrors may be vain, 75
Your brightest hopes may fail.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
258.
Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner
AULD comrade dear, and brither sinner,
How’s a’ the folk about Glenconner?
How do you this blae eastlin wind,
That’s like to blaw a body blind?
For me, my faculties are frozen, 5
My dearest member nearly dozen’d.
I’ve sent you here, by Johnie Simson,
Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on;
Smith, wi’ his sympathetic feeling,
An’ Reid, to common sense appealing. 10
Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
An’ meikle Greek an’ Latin mangled,
Till wi’ their logic-jargon tir’d,
And in the depth of science mir’d,
To common sense they now appeal, 15
What wives and wabsters see and feel.
But, hark ye, friend! I charge you strictly,
Peruse them, an’ return them quickly:
For now I’m grown sae cursed douce
I pray and ponder butt the house; 20
My shins, my lane, I there sit roastin’,
Perusing Bunyan, Brown, an’ Boston,
Till by an’ by, if I haud on,
I’ll grunt a real gospel-groan:
Already I begin to try it, 25
To cast my e’en up like a pyet,
When by the gun she tumbles o’er
Flutt’ring an’ gasping in her gore:
Sae shortly you shall see me bright,
A burning an’ a shining light. 30
My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen,
The ace an’ wale of honest men:
When bending down wi’ auld grey hairs
Beneath the load of years and cares,
May He who made him still support him, 35
An’ views beyond the grave comfort him;
His worthy fam’ly far and near,
God bless them a’ wi’ grace and gear!
My auld schoolfellow, Preacher Willie,
The manly tar, my mason-billie, 40
And Auchenbay, I wish him joy,
If he’s a parent, lass or boy,
May he be dad, and Meg the mither,
Just five-and-forty years thegither!
And no forgetting wabster Charlie, 45
I’m tauld he offers very fairly.
An’ Lord, remember singing Sannock,
Wi’ hale breeks, saxpence, an’ a bannock!
And next, my auld acquaintance, Nancy,
Since she is fitted to her fancy, 50
An’ her kind stars hae airted till her
gA guid chiel wi’ a pickle siller.
My kindest, best respects, I sen’ it,
To cousin Kate, an’ sister Janet:
Tell them, frae me, wi’ chiels be cautious, 55
For, faith, they’ll aiblins fin’ them fashious;
To grant a heart is fairly civil,
But to grant a maidenhead’s the devil.
An’ lastly, Jamie, for yoursel,
May guardian angels tak a spell, 60
An’ steer you seven miles south o’ hell:
But first, before you see heaven’s glory,
May ye get mony a merry story,
Mony a laugh, and mony a drink,
And aye eneugh o’ needfu’ clink. 65
Now fare ye weel, an’ joy be wi’ you:
For my sake, this I beg it o’ you,
Assist poor Simson a’ ye can,
Ye’ll fin; him just an honest man;
Sae I conclude, and quat my chanter, 70
Your’s, saint or sinner,
ROB THE RANTER.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
259.
A New Psalm for the Chapel of Kilmarnock
On the Thanksgiving-Day for His Majesty’s Recovery.
O SING a new song to the Lord,
Make, all and every one,
A joyful noise, even for the King
His restoration.
The sons of Belial in the land 5
Did set their heads together;
Come, let us sweep them off, said they,
Like an o’erflowing river.
They set their heads together, I say,
They set their heads together; 10
On right, on left, on every hand,
We saw none to deliver.
Thou madest strong two chosen ones
To quell the Wicked’s pride;
That Young Man, great in Issachar, 15
The burden-bearing tribe.
And him, among the Princes chief
In our Jerusalem,
The judge that’s mighty in thy law,
The man that fears thy name. 20
Yet they, even they, with all their strength,
Began to faint and fail:
Even as two howling, ravenous wolves
To dogs do turn their tail.
Th’ ungodly o’er the just prevail’d, 25
For so thou hadst appointed;
That thou might’st greater glory give
Unto thine own anointed.
And now thou hast restored our State,
Pity our Kirk also; 30
For she by tribulations
Is now brought very low.
Consume that high-place, Patronage,
From off thy holy hill;
And in thy fury burn the book — 35
Even of that man M’Gill.
Now hear our prayer, accept our song,
And fight thy chosen’s battle:
We seek but little, Lord, from thee,
Thou kens we get as little. 40
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
260.
Sketch in Verse, inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox
Inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox.
HOW wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite,
How Virtue and Vice blend their black and their white,
How Genius, th’ illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,
I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, 5
I care not, not I — let the Critics go whistle!
But now for a Patron whose name and whose glory,
At once may illustrate and honour my story.
Thou first of our orators, first of our wits;
Yet whose parts and acquirements seem just lucky hits; 10
With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong,
No man with the half of ‘em e’er could go wrong;
With passions so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of ‘em e’er could go right;
A sorry, poor, misbegot son of the Muses, 15
For using thy name, offers fifty excuses.
Good L — d, what is Man! for as simple he looks,
Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks;
With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil,
All in all he’s a problem must puzzle the devil. 20
On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours,
That, like th’ old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours:
Mankind are his show-box — a friend, would you know him?
Pull the string, Ruling Passion the picture will show him,
What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, 25
One trifling particular, Truth, should have miss’d him;
For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,
Mankind is a science defies definitions.
Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe,
And think human nature they truly describe; 30
Have you found this, or t’other? There’s more in the wind;
As by one drunken fellow his comrades you’ll find.
But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan,
In the make of that wonderful creature called Man,
No two virtues, whatever relation they claim. 35
Nor even two different shades of the same,
Though like as was ever twin brother to brother,
Possessing the one shall imply you’ve the other.
But truce with abstraction, and truce with a Muse
Whose rhymes you’ll perhaps, Sir, ne’er deign to peruse: 40
Will you leave your justings, your jars, and your quarrels,
Contending with Billy for proud-nodding laurels?
My much-honour’d Patron, believe your poor poet,
Your courage, much more than your prudence, you show it:
In vain with Squire Billy for laurels you struggle: 45
He’ll have them by fair trade, if not, he will smuggle:
Not cabinets even of kings would conceal ‘em,
He’d up the back stairs, and by G — , he would steal ‘em,
Then feats like Squire Billy’s you ne’er can achieve ‘em;
It is not, out-do him — the task is, out-thieve him! 50
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
261.
The Wounded Hare
INHUMAN man! curse on thy barb’rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye;
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!
Go live, poor wand’rer of the wood and field! 5
The bitter little that of life remains:
No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains
To thee a home, or food, or pastime yield.
Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,
No more of rest, but now thy dying bed! 10
The sheltering rushes whistling o’er thy head,
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest.
Perhaps a mother’s anguish adds its woe;
The playful pair crowd fondly by thy side;
Ah! helpless nurslings, who will now provide 15
That life a mother only can bestow!
Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,
I’ll miss thee sporting o’er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian’s aim, and mourn thy hapless fate. 20
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
262.
Delia: An Ode
“To the Editor of The Star. — Mr.
1 comment