The Complete Works. Robert Burns

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The smile of love, the friendly tear,

       The sympathetic glow!

       Long since, this world’s thorny ways

       Had number’d out my weary days,

       Had it not been for you!

       Fate still has blest me with a friend,

       In every care and ill;

       And oft a more endearing hand,

       A tie more tender still.

       It lightens, it brightens

       The tenebrific scene,

       To meet with, and greet with

       My Davie or my Jean!

      XI.

      O, how that name inspires my style

       The words come skelpin, rank and file,

       Amaist before I ken!

       The ready measure rins as fine,

       As Phœbus and the famous Nine

       Were glowrin owre my pen.

       My spaviet Pegasus will limp,

       ’Till ance he’s fairly het;

       And then he’ll hilch, and stilt, and jimp,

       An’ rin an unco fit:

       But least then, the beast then

       Should rue this hasty ride,

       I’ll light now, and dight now

       His sweaty, wizen’d hide.

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [4] Ramsay.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      A BROTHER POET.

      [David Sillar, to whom these epistles are addressed, was at that time master of a country school, and was welcome to Burns both as a scholar and a writer of verse. This epistle he prefixed to his poems printed at Kilmarnock in the year 1789: he loved to speak of his early comrade, and supplied Walker with some very valuable anecdotes: he died one of the magistrates of Irvine, on the 2d of May, 1830, at the age of seventy.]

      AULD NIBOR,

       I’m three times doubly o’er your debtor,

       For your auld-farrent, frien’ly letter;

       Tho’ I maun say’t, I doubt ye flatter,

       Ye speak sae fair.

       For my puir, silly, rhymin clatter

       Some less maun sair.

      Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle;

       Lang may your elbuck jink and diddle,

       To cheer you thro’ the weary widdle

       O’ war’ly cares,

       Till bairn’s bairns kindly cuddle

       Your auld, gray hairs.

      But Davie, lad, I’m red ye’re glaikit;

       I’m tauld the Muse ye hae negleckit;

       An’ gif it’s sae, ye sud be licket

       Until yo fyke;

       Sic hauns as you sud ne’er be faiket,

       Be hain’t who like.

      For me, I’m on Parnassus’ brink,

       Rivin’ the words to gar them clink;

       Whyles daez’t wi’ love, whyles daez’t wi’ drink,

       Wi’ jads or masons;

       An’ whyles, but ay owre late, I think

       Braw sober lessons.

      Of a’ the thoughtless sons o’ man,

       Commen’ me to the Bardie clan;

       Except it be some idle plan

       O’ rhymin’ clink,

       The devil-haet, that I sud ban,

       They ever think.

      Nae thought, nae view, nae scheme o’ livin’,

       Nae cares to gie us joy or grievin’;

       But just the pouchie put the nieve in,

       An’ while ought’s there,

       Then hiltie skiltie, we gae scrievin’,

       An’ fash nae mair.

      Leeze me on rhyme! it’s aye a treasure,

       My chief, amaist my only pleasure,

       At hame, a-fiel’, at work, or leisure,

       The Muse, poor hizzie!

       Tho’ rough an’ raploch be her measure,

       She’s seldom lazy.

      Haud to the Muse, my dainty Davie:

       The warl’ may play you monie a shavie;

       But for the Muse she’ll never leave ye,

       Tho’ e’er so puir,

       Na, even tho’ limpin’ wi’ the spavie

       Frae door to door.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      “O Prince! O Chief of many throned Pow’rs,

       That led th’ embattled Seraphim to war.”

      Milton

      [The beautiful and relenting spirit in which this fine poem finishes moved the heart on one of the coldest of our critics. “It was, I think,” says Gilbert Burns, “in the winter of 1784, as we were going with carts for coals to the family fire, and I could yet point out the particular spot, that Robert first repeated to me the ‘Address to the Deil.’ The idea of the address was suggested to him by running over in his mind the many ludicrous accounts we have of that august personage.”]

      O thou! whatever title suit thee,

       Auld Hornie, Satan, Kick, or Clootie,

       Wha in yon cavern grim an’ sootie,

       Closed under hatches,

       Spairges about the brunstane cootie,

       To scaud poor wretches!

      Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee,

       An’ let poor damned bodies be;

       I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie,

       E’en to a deil,

       To skelp an’ scaud poor dogs like me,