THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS 24

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS 24

But let the kirk-folk ring their bells,

Let's sing about our noble sel's;

We'll cry nae jads frae heathen hills

To help, or roose us,

But browster wives an' whiskey stills,

They are the muses.

 

Your friendship, Sir, I winna quat it

An' if ye mak' objections at it,

Then han' in nieve some day we'll knot it,

An' witness take,

An' when wi' Usquabae we've wat it

It winna break.

 

But if the beast and branks be spar'd

Till kye be gaun without the herd,

An' a' the vittel in the yard,

An' theekit right,

I mean your ingle-side to guard

Ae winter night.

 

Then muse-inspirin' aqua-vitæ

Shall make us baith sae blythe an' witty,

Till ye forget ye're auld an' gatty,

An' be as canty,

As ye were nine year less than thretty,

Sweet ane an' twenty!

 

But stooks are cowpet wi' the blast,

An' now the sin keeks in the west,

Then I maun rin amang the rest

An' quat my chanter;

Sae I subscribe myself in haste,

Yours, Rab the Ranter.

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

 

XXXII.

 

TO

 

WILLIAM SIMPSON,

 

OCHILTREE.

 

[The person to whom this epistle is addressed, was schoolmaster of

Ochiltree, and afterwards of New Lanark: he was a writer of verses

too, like many more of the poet's comrades;--of verses which rose not

above the barren level of mediocrity: "one of his poems," says

Chambers, "was a laughable elegy on the death of the Emperor Paul." In

his verses to Burns, under the name of a Tailor, there is nothing to

laugh at, though they are intended to be laughable as well as

monitory.]

 

 

_May, 1785._

 

I gat your letter, winsome Willie;

Wi' gratefu' heart I thank you brawlie;

Tho' I maun say't, I wad be silly,

An' unco vain,

Should I believe, my coaxin' billie,

Your flatterin' strain.

 

But I'se believe ye kindly meant it,

I sud be laith to think ye hinted

Ironic satire, sidelins sklented

On my poor Musie;

Tho' in sic phraisin' terms ye've penn'd it,

I scarce excuse ye.

 

My senses wad be in a creel,

Should I but dare a hope to speel,

Wi' Allan, or wi' Gilbertfield,

The braes o' fame;

Or Fergusson, the writer chiel,

A deathless name.

 

(O Fergusson! thy glorious parts

Ill suited law's dry, musty arts!

My curse upon your whunstane hearts,

Ye Enbrugh gentry!

The tythe o' what ye waste at cartes

Wad stow'd his pantry!)

 

Yet when a tale comes i' my head,

Or lasses gie my heart a screed,

As whiles they're like to be my dead

(O sad disease!)

I kittle up my rustic reed,

It gies me ease.

 

Auld Coila, now, may fidge fu' fain,

She's gotten poets o' her ain,

Chiels wha their chanters winna hain,

But tune their lays,

Till echoes a' resound again

Her weel-sung praise.

 

Nae poet thought her worth his while,

To set her name in measur'd stile;

She lay like some unkenn'd-of isle

Beside New-Holland,

Or whare wild-meeting oceans boil

Besouth Magellan.

 

Ramsay an' famous Fergusson

Gied Forth and Tay a lift aboon;

Yarrow an' Tweed, to monie a tune,

Owre Scotland rings,

While Irwin, Lugar, Ayr, an' Doon,

Nae body sings.

 

Th' Ilissus, Tiber, Thames, an' Seine,

Glide sweet in monie a tunefu' line!

But, Willie, set your fit to mine,

An' cock your crest,

We'll gar our streams an' burnies shine

Up wi' the best.

 

We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells,

Her moor's red-brown wi' heather bells,

Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells,

Where glorious Wallace

Aft bure the gree, as story tells,

Frae southron billies.

 

At Wallace' name, what Scottish blood

But boils up in a spring-tide flood!

Oft have our fearless fathers strode

By Wallace' side,

Still pressing onward, red-wat shod,

Or glorious dy'd.

 

O sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods,

When lintwhites chant amang the buds,

And jinkin' hares, in amorous whids

Their loves enjoy,

While thro' the braes the cushat croods

With wailfu' cry!

 

Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me

When winds rave thro' the naked tree;

Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree

Are hoary gray:

Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee,

Dark'ning the day.

 

O Nature! a' thy shews an' forms

To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms!

Whether the summer kindly warms,

Wi' life an' light,

Or winter howls, in gusty storms,

The lang, dark night!

 

The muse, nae Poet ever fand her,

'Till by himsel' he learn'd to wander,

Adown some trotting burn's meander,

An' no think lang;

O sweet, to stray an' pensive ponder

A heart-felt sang!

 

The warly race may drudge an' drive,

Hog-shouther, jundie, stretch an' strive,

Let me fair Nature's face descrive,

And I, wi' pleasure,

Shall let the busy, grumbling hive

Bum owre their treasure.

 

Fareweel, my "rhyme-composing brither!"

We've been owre lang unkenn'd to ither:

Now let us lay our heads thegither,

In love fraternal;

May envy wallop in a tether,

Black fiend, infernal!

 

While Highlandmen hate tolls an' taxes;

While moorlan' herds like guid fat braxies;

While terra firma, on her axes

Diurnal turns,

Count on a friend, in faith an' practice,

In Robert Burns.

 

POSTscRIPT

 

My memory's no worth a preen:

I had amaist forgotten clean,

Ye bade me write you what they mean,

By this New Light,

'Bout which our herds sae aft hae been,

Maist like to fight.

 

In days when mankind were but callans,

At grammar, logic, an' sic talents,

They took nae pains their speech to balance,

Or rules to gie,

But spak their thoughts in plain, braid Lallans,

Like you or me.

 

In thae auld times, they thought the moon,

Just like a sark, or pair o' shoon,

Wore by degrees, 'till her last roon,

Gaed past their viewing,

An' shortly after she was done,

They gat a new one.

 

This past for certain--undisputed;

It ne'er cam i' their heads to doubt it,

'Till chiels gat up an' wad confute it,

An' ca'd it wrang;

An' muckle din there was about it,

Baith loud an' lang.

 

Some herds, weel learn'd upo' the beuk,

Wad threap auld folk the thing misteuk;

For 'twas the auld moon turned a neuk,

An' out o' sight,

An' backlins-comin', to the leuk,

She grew mair bright.

 

This was deny'd, it was affirm'd;

The herds an' hissels were alarm'd:

The rev'rend gray-beards rav'd and storm'd

That beardless laddies

Should think they better were inform'd

Than their auld daddies.

 

Frae less to mair it gaed to sticks;

Frae words an' aiths to clours an' nicks,

An' monie a fallow gat his licks,

Wi' hearty crunt;

An' some, to learn them for their tricks,

Were hang'd an' brunt.

 

This game was play'd in monie lands,

An' Auld Light caddies bure sic hands,

That, faith, the youngsters took the sands

Wi' nimble shanks,

'Till lairds forbade, by strict commands,

Sic bluidy pranks.

 

But New Light herds gat sic a cowe,

Folk thought them ruin'd stick-an'-stowe,

Till now amaist on every knowe,

Ye'll find ane plac'd;

An' some their New Light fair avow,

Just quite barefac'd.

 

Nae doubt the Auld Light flocks are bleatin';

Their zealous herds are vex'd an' sweatin':

Mysel', I've even seen them greetin'

Wi' girnin' spite,

To hear the moon sae sadly lie'd on

By word an' write.

 

But shortly they will cowe the loons;

Some Auld Light herds in neibor towns

Are mind't in things they ca' balloons,

To tak a flight,

An' stay ae month amang the moons

And see them right.

 

Guid observation they will gie them:

An' when the auld moon's gaun to lea'e them,

The hindmost shaird, they'll fetch it wi' them,

Just i' their pouch,

An' when the New Light billies see them,

I think they'll crouch!

 

Sae, ye observe that a' this clatter

Is naething but a "moonshine matter;"

But tho' dull prose-folk Latin splatter

In logic tulzie,

I hope we bardies ken some better

Than mind sic brulzie.

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

 

XXXIII.

 

ADDRESS

 

TO AN

 

ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.

 

[This hasty and not very decorous effusion, was originally entitled

"The Poet's Welcome; or, Rab the Rhymer's Address to his Bastard

Child." A copy, with the more softened, but less expressive title, was

published by Stewart, in 1801, and is alluded to by Burns himself, in

his biographical letter to Moore. "Bonnie Betty," the mother of the

"sonsie-smirking, dear-bought Bess," of the Inventory, lived in

Largieside: to support this daughter the poet made over the copyright

of his works when he proposed to go to the West Indies. She lived to

be a woman, and to marry one John Bishop, overseer at Polkemmet, where

she died in 1817. It is said she resembled Burns quite as much as any

of the rest of his children.]

 

 

Thou's welcome, wean, mischanter fa' me,

If ought of thee, or of thy mammy,

Shall ever daunton me, or awe me,

My sweet wee lady,

Or if I blush when thou shalt ca' me

Tit-ta or daddy.

 

Wee image of my bonny Betty,

I, fatherly, will kiss and daut thee,

As dear and near my heart I set thee

Wi' as gude will

As a' the priests had seen me get thee

That's out o' hell.

 

What tho' they ca' me fornicator,

An' tease my name in kintry clatter:

The mair they talk I'm kent the better,

E'en let them clash;

An auld wife's tongue's a feckless matter

To gie ane fash.

 

Sweet fruit o' mony a merry dint,

My funny toil is now a' tint,

Sin' thou came to the warl asklent,

Which fools may scoff at;

In my last plack thy part's be in't

The better ha'f o't.

 

An' if thou be what I wad hae thee,

An' tak the counsel I sall gie thee,

A lovin' father I'll be to thee,

If thou be spar'd;

Thro' a' thy childish years I'll e'e thee,

An' think't weel war'd.

 

Gude grant that thou may ay inherit

Thy mither's person, grace, an' merit,

An' thy poor worthless daddy's spirit,

Without his failins;

'Twill please me mair to hear an' see it

Than stocket mailens.

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

 

XXXIV.

 

NATURE'S LAW.

 

A POEM HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO G. H. ESQ.

 

"Great nature spoke, observant man obey'd."

Pope.

 

[This Poem was written by Burns at Mossgiel, and "humbly inscribed to

Gavin Hamilton, Esq." It is supposed to allude to his intercourse with

Jean Armour, with the circumstances of which he seems to have made

many of his comrades acquainted. These verses were well known to many

of the admirers of the poet, but they remained in manuscript till

given to the world by Sir Harris Nicolas, in Pickering's Aldine

Edition of the British Poets.]

 

 

Let other heroes boast their scars,

The marks of sturt and strife;

And other poets sing of wars,

The plagues of human life;

Shame fa' the fun; wi' sword and gun

To slap mankind like lumber!

I sing his name, and nobler fame,

Wha multiplies our number.

 

Great Nature spoke with air benign,

"Go on, ye human race!

This lower world I you resign;

Be fruitful and increase.

The liquid fire of strong desire

I've pour'd it in each bosom;

Here, in this hand, does mankind stand,

And there, is beauty's blossom."

 

The hero of these artless strains,

A lowly bard was he,

Who sung his rhymes in Coila's plains

With meikle mirth an' glee;

Kind Nature's care had given his share,

Large, of the flaming current;

And all devout, he never sought

To stem the sacred torrent.

 

He felt the powerful, high behest,

Thrill vital through and through;

And sought a correspondent breast,

To give obedience due:

Propitious Powers screen'd the young flowers,

From mildews of abortion;

And lo! the bard, a great reward,

Has got a double portion!

 

Auld cantie Coil may count the day,

As annual it returns,

The third of Libra's equal sway,

That gave another B[urns],

With future rhymes, an' other times,

To emulate his sire;

To sing auld Coil in nobler style,

With more poetic fire.

 

Ye Powers of peace, and peaceful song,

Look down with gracious eyes;

And bless auld Coila, large and long,

With multiplying joys:

Lang may she stand to prop the land,

The flow'r of ancient nations;

And B[urns's] spring, her fame to sing,

Thro' endless generations!