INSCRIBED TO R. AIKEN, ESQ. |
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, |
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; |
Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful
smile, |
The short and simple annals of the poor. |
GRAY |
1. |
My lov’d, my honor’d, much respected friend
! |
No mercenary bard
his homage pays ; |
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish
end, |
My dearest meed, a
friend’s esteem and praise : |
To you I sing, in
simple Scottish lays, |
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene
; |
The native
feelings strong, the guileless ways ; |
What Aiken in a cottage would have been ; |
Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier
there I ween!
|
2. |
November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh ; |
The
short’ning winter-day is near a close ; |
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh
; |
The black’ning
trains o’ craws to their repose : |
The toil-worn
Cotter frae his labor goes— |
This night his weekly moil is at an end, |
Collects his
spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, |
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, |
And weary, o’er the moor, his course does
hameward bend.
|
3. |
At length his lonely cot appears in view. |
Beneath the
shelter of an aged tree ; |
Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher
through |
To meet
their dad, wi’ flichterin’ noise and glee. |
His wee bit
ingle, blinkin bonilie, |
His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty’s
wifie’s smile, |
The lisping
infant, prattling on his knee, |
Does a’ his weary carking cares beguile, |
And makes him quite forget his labor and
his toil.
|
4. |
Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, |
At service
out, amang the farmers roun’ ; |
Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie
rin |
A cannie errand to
a neebor town : |
Their eldest hope,
their Jenny, woman grown, |
In youthfu’ bloom, love spakling in her e’e, |
Comes hame ;
perhaps, to shew a braw new gown, |
Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, |
To help her parents dear, if they in
hardship be.
|
5. |
With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters
meet, |
And each for
other’s weelfare kindly spiers : |
The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d
fleet ; |
Each tells the
uncos that he sees or hears. |
The parents
partial eye their hopeful years ; |
Anticipation forward points the view ; |
The mother, wi’
her needle and her sheers, |
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the
new ; |
The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.
|
6. |
Their master’s and their mistress’s command |
The younkers a’
are warned to obey ; |
And mind their labors wi’ an eydent hand, |
And ne’er, tho’
out o’ sight, to jauk or play : |
‘And O! be sure to
fear the Lord alway, |
And mind your duty, duly, morn and night ; |
Lest in
temptation’s path ye gang astray, |
Implore His counsel and assisting might : |
They never sought in vain that sought the
Lord aright.
|
7. |
But hark! a rap comes gently to the door ; |
Jenny, wha kens
the meaning o’ the same, |
Tells how a neebor lad came o’er the moor, |
To do some
errands, and convoy her hame. |
The wily mother
sees the conscious flame |
Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek
; |
With heart-struck
anxious care, enquires his name, |
While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak ; |
Weel-pleas’d the mother hears, it’s nae
wile, worthless rake.
|
8. |
With kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben ; |
A strappin’ youth,
he takes the mother’s eye ; |
Blythe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill taen ; |
The father cracks
of horses, pleughs, and kye, |
The youngster’s
artless heart ov’erflows wi’ joy, |
But blate and laithfu’, scarce can weel
behave ; |
The mother, wi’ a
woman’s wiles, can spy |
What makes the youth sae bashfu’ and sae
grave ; |
Weel-please’d to think her bairn’s
respected like the lave.
|
9. |
O happy love! where love like this is found
: |
O heart-felt
raptures! bliss beyond compare! |
I’ve pacèd much this weary, mortal round, |
And sage
experience bids me this declare:— |
‘If Heaven a
draught of heavenly pleasure spare, |
One cordial in this melancholy vale, |
‘Tis when a
youthful, loving, modest pair, |
In other’s arms, breathe out the tender
tale |
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents
the ev’ning gale.’
|
10. |
Is there, in human form, that bears a
heart, |
A wretch! a
villain! lost to love and truth! |
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art, |
Betray sweet
Jenny’s unsuspecting youth? |
Curse on his
perjur’d arts! dissembling, smooth! |
Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exil’d? |
Is there no
pity, no relenting ruth, |
Points to the parents fondling o’er their
child? |
Then paints the ruin’d maid, and their
distraction wild?
|
11. |
But now the supper crowns their simple
board, |
The healsome
parritch, chief o’ Scotia’s food ; |
The soupe their only hawkie does afford, |
That, ‘yont
the hallan snugly chows her cood ; |
The dame
brings forth, in complimental mood, |
To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck,
fell ; |
And aft he’s
prest, and aft he ca’s it guid ; |
The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, |
How ‘twas a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’
the bell.
|
12. |
The chearfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face, |
They, round the
ingle, form a circle wide ; |
The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace, |
The big ha’-Bible,
ance his father’s pride, |
His bonnet
rev’rently is laid aside, |
His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare ; |
Those strains that
one did sweet in Zion glide, |
He wales a portion with judicious care, |
And ‘Let us worship God’ he says, with
solemn air.
|
13. |
They chant their artless notes in simple
guise, |
They tune
their hearts, by far the noblest aim ; |
Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling
measures rise, |
Or plaintive
Martyrs, worthy of the name ; |
Or noble
Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame, |
The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays : |
Compar’d
with these, Italian trills are tame ; |
The tickl’d ears no heart-felt raptures
raise ; |
Nae unison hae they, with our Creator’s
praise.
|
14. |
The priest-like father reads the sacred
page, |
How
Abram was the friend of God on high ; |
Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage |
With
Amalek’s ungracious progeny ; |
Or, how the
royal Bard did groaning lie |
Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire
; |
Or Job’s
pathetic plaint, and wailing cry ; |
Or rapt Isiah’s wild, seraphic fire ; |
Or other holy Seers that tune the sacred
lyre.
|
15. |
Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme : |
How guiltless
blood for guilty man was shed ; |
How He, who bore in Heaven the second name, |
Had not on earth
whereon to lay His head ; |
How His first
followers and servants sped ; |
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land
: |
How he, who lone
in Patmos banishèd, |
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, |
And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounc’d
by Heaven’s command.
|
16. |
Then kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal
King, |
The saint, the
father, and the husband prays : |
Hope ‘springs exulting on truimphant wing.’ |
That thus they all
shall meet in future days, |
There, ever bask
in uncreated rays, |
No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear, |
Together hymning
their Creator’s praise, |
In such society, yet still more dear ; |
While circling Time moves round in an
eternal sphere.
|
17. |
Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s
pride, |
In all the pomp of
method, and of art ; |
When men display to congregations wide |
Devotion’s ev’ry
grace, except the heart ! |
The Power,
incens’d, the pageant will desert, |
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole : |
But haply, in some
cottage far apart, |
May hear, well-pleas’d, the language of the
soul, |
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor
enroll.
|
18. |
Then homeward all take off their sev’ral
way ; |
The youngling
cottagers retire to rest : |
The parent-pair their secret homage pay, |
And proffer up to
Heaven the warm request, |
That He who stills
the raven’s clam’rous nest, |
And decks the lily fair in flow’ry pride, |
Would, in the way
His wisdom sees the best, |
For them and for their little ones provide
; |
But, chiefly, in their hearts with Grace
Divine preside.
|
19. |
From scenes like these, old Scotia’s
grandeur springs |
That makes her
lov’d at home, rever’d abroad : |
Princes and lords are but the breath of
kings, |
‘An honest man’s
the noble(st) work of God’; |
And certes, in
fair Virtue’s heavenly road, |
The cottage leaves the palace far behind ; |
What is a
lordling’s pomp? a cumbrous load, |
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, |
Studied in arts of Hell, in wickedness
refin’d!
|
20. |
O Scotia! my dear, my native soil! |
For whom my
warmest wish to Heaven is sent! |
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil |
Be blest with
health, and peace, and sweet content! |
And O! may Heaven
their simple lives prevent |
From Luxury’s contagion, weak and vile ! |
Then, howe’er
crowns and coronets be rent, |
A virtuous populace may rise the while, |
And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov’d
Isle.
|
21. |
O Thou! who pour’d the patriotic tide, |
That stream’d
thro’ Wallace’s undaunted heart, |
Who dar’d to, nobly, stem tyrannic pride, |
Or nobly die, the
second glorious part : |
(The patriot’s
God, peculiarly Thou art, |
His friend,
inspirer, guardian, and reward!) |
O never, never
Scotia’s realm desert ; |
But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard |
In bright succession raise, her ornament
and guard!
|
Robert Burns
| Classic Poems |
|
[ A Red, Red Rose ] [ To a Mountain Daisy ] [ Address to a Haggis ] [ Address to Edinburgh ] [ Auld Lang Syne ] [ Is there for Honest Poverty ] [ Address to the Unco Guid ] [ The Cotter's Saturday Night ] [ To a Louse ] [ My Heart's in the Highlands ] [ Holy Willie's Prayer ] [ Tam O'Shanter ] [ To a Mouse ] |