by Robert Burns
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 ban
nock!
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. Printer — If the productions of a simple ploughman can merit a place in the same paper with Sylvester Otway, and the other favourites of the Muses who illuminate the Star with the lustre of genius, your insertion of the enclosed trifle will be succeeded by future communications from — Yours, &c., R. BURNS.
Ellisland, near Dumfries, 18th May, 1789.”
FAIR the face of orient day,
Fair the tints of op’ning rose;
But fairer still my Delia dawns,
More lovely far her beauty shows.
Sweet the lark’s wild warbled lay, 5
Sweet the tinkling rill to hear;
But, Delia, more delightful still,
Steal thine accents on mine ear.
The flower-enamour’d busy bee
The rosy banquet loves to sip; 10
Sweet the streamlet’s limpid lapse
To the sun-brown’d Arab’s lip.
But, Delia, on thy balmy lips
Let me, no vagrant insect, rove;
O let me steal one liquid kiss, 15
For Oh! my soul is parch’d with love.
Chronological List of Poems
Alphabetical List of Poems
263.
The Gardener wi’ his Paidle (Song)
Tune— “The Gardener’s March.”
WHEN rosy May comes in wi’ flowers,
To deck her gay, green-spreading bowers,
Then busy, busy are his hours,
The Gard’ner wi’ his paidle.
The crystal waters gently fa’, 5
The merry bards are lovers a’,
The scented breezes round him blaw —
The Gard’ner wi’ his paidle.