He looked just as your sign-post Lions do,
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.
Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs
Oswald of Auchencruive.1
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,
Baited with many a deadly curse?
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;
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,
She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest!
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;
'Tis thy trusty quondam Mate,
Doom'd to share thy fiery fate;
She, tardy, hell-ward plies.
And are they of no more avail,
Ten thousand glittering pounds a-year?
In other worlds can Mammon fail,
Omnipotent as he is here!
1 An attack on a dead woman, however unlovely in her life, is hardly worthy of Burns. Her "funeral pageantry" disturbed Burns at an inn, and caused
him the annoyance of a long ride on a weary horse. Chambers says that the dead woman "" was fairly liable to no such censure."
O, bitter mockery of the pompous bier,
While down the wretched Vital Part is driven !
The cave-lodged Beggar, with a conscience clear,
Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to Heaven.
Pegasus at Wanlockhead.1
WITH Pegasus upon a day,
Apollo weary flying,
Through frosty hills the journey lay,
On foot the way was plying.
Poor slipshod giddy Pegasus
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,
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,
I'll pay you like my master.
Sappho Redivivus-A fragment.2
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!
1 Pegasus was "the young favourite horse disturbed by Mrs Oswald's inopportune burial.
2 Rediviva were of a more accurate
Latinity. The piece is made up from scraps of various provenance. A local scandal was the occasion of the piece.
Ev'n the poor support of my wretched life,
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:
(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-
I know its worst, and can that worst despise ;
Let Prudence' direst bodements on me fall,
M[ontgomery, rich reward, o'erpays them all!
Mild zephyrs waft thee to life's farthest shore,
Nor think of me and my distresses more,-
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
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.
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,
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!
By your dear self!-the last great oath I swear,
Not life, nor soul, were ever half so dear!1
Song. She's fair and fause.2
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,
And I hae tinto 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;
Nae ferlied '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-
I mean an angel mind.
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
Thine and thine only I must live and die.
2 Miss Stewart had not married Mr Cunningham, but another.
3 Mr Riddell used to send Burns the newspapers.
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