TO THE OWL. [According to Burns these verses were the production of one John M'Creddie: but no person Is beauty less, when down the glowing cheek Sad, piteous tears, in native sorrows fall? bearing that name has ever claimed the author-Less kind the heart when anguish bids ship. Cromek, the collector of the Reliques, was strongly of opinion, everything considered, that they were from the hand of Burns himself, and they were unquestionably found among his it break? Less happy he who lists to pity's call? papers in holograph, with emendations and inter- Ah, no, sad Owl! nor is thy voice less lineations.] SAD bird of night, what sorrows call thee forth, sweet, That sadness tunes it, and that grief is there; To vent thy plaints thus in the mid- That Spring's gay notes, unskilled, thou night hour? Is it some blast that gathers in the north, bower? Is it, sad Owl, that Autumn strips the shade, canst repeat; That sorrow bids thee to the gloom repair. Nor that the treble songsters of the day Are quite estranged, sad bird of night! from thee; And leaves thee here, unsheltered and Nor that the thrush deserts the evening There hooting, I will list more pleased to thee Than ever lover to the nightingale; And pleased in sorrow listen to thy Or drooping wretch, oppressed with VERSES TO MY BED. [Years after Burns had written these lines, the Count Xavier de Maistre articulated the same thought more epigrammatically in his "Expédition Nocturne autour de ma Chambre," where he wrote in the fifth chapter-"Our bed witnesses our birth and our death: it is a cradle scattered over with flowers; it is the throne of love; it is a sepulchre.] THOU Bed, in which I first began The bounds where good and ill reside; SECOND EPISTLE TO ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ., OF FINTRY. [The date of this Epistle, according to the Glenriddel Manuscript, was the 5th of October, 1791.] LATE crippled of an arm, and now a leg, About to beg a pass for leave to beg: Dull, listless, teased, dejected, and deprest, (Nature is adverse to a cripple's rest ;) Will generous Graham list to his Poet's wail? (It soothes poor Misery, hearkening to her tale,) And hear him curse the light he first surveyed, And doubly curse the luckless rhyming trade? Thou Nature! partial Nature! I arraign; One shakes the forest, and one spurns the ground: Thou giv'st the ass his hide, the snail his shell, Th' envenomed wasp, victorious, guards his cell; Thy minions, kings defend, control, devour, In all th' omnipotence of rule and power! Foxes and statesmen subtle wiles ensure; The cit and polecat stink, and are secure; Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug, The priest and hedgehog in their robes are snug; Ev'n silly woman has her warlike arts, Her tongue and eyes, her dreaded spear and darts ; But, oh! thou bitter step-mother and Till, fled each hope that once his bosom hard, fired, To thy poor, fenceless, naked child-the And fled each Muse that glorious once Bard! A thing unteachable in worldly skill, And half an idiot too, more helpless still; inspired, Low sunk in squalid, unprotected age, Dead, even resentment for his injured page, No heels to bear him from the op'ning He heeds or feels no more the ruthless dun; No claws to dig, his hated sight to shun : worn, And those, alas! not Amalthea's horn: cur, Clad in rich Dulness' comfortable fur; tremes Oh, Dulness! portion of the truly blest! Calm sheltered haven of eternal rest! Vampyre booksellers drain him to the Thy sons ne'er madden in the fierce exheart, And scorpion critics cureless venom dart. Of Fortune's polar frost, or torrid beams. If mantling high she fills the golden cup, Critics! - appalled I venture on the With sober selfish ease they sıp it up : Conscious the bounteous meed they well deserve, name, Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame : Bloody dissectors, worse than ten Monroes! He hacks to teach, they mangle to ex pose. They only wonder " some folks" do not starve, The grave sage hern thus easy picks his frog, And thinks the mallard a sad worthless dog. His heart by causeless, wanton malice When disappointment snaps the clue of By blockheads' daring into madness And through disastrous night they dark ling grope, stung; His well-won bays, than life itself more With deaf endurance sluggishly they dear, bear, By miscreants torn, who ne'er one sprig And just conclude that must wear: Fortune's care." "fools are Foiled, bleeding, tortured, in th' unequal So, heavy, passive to the tempest's strife, shocks, The hapless Poet flounders on through Strong on the sign-post stands the stupid [Captain Francis Grose, son of a jeweller at Richmond, in Surrey, was Born there in 1743, dying forty-eight years afterwards very suddenly, of apoplexy, on the 12th of May, 1791, at Dublin. Having, by reason of his utter carelessness in regard to money, been reduced to poverty at thirty years of age (by which time through good living he had become a perfect wonder With many a filial tear circling the bed of obesity) he turned artist and antiquary— of death! THIRD EPISTLE TO ROBERT I CALL no goddess to inspire my strains, producing between 1773 and 1788, in eight quarto volumes, his " Antiquities of England and Wales," embellished by nearly six hundred views of his own drawing. Travelling in Scotland, pen and pencil alternately in his hand, for the continuation of this opus magnum, he met Burns at Mr. Riddel's residence of Friar's Carse. The humourists-poet and antiquarytook to each other immensely. Grose's jovial face and figure were of themselves provocative of merriment. And the lovers of Burns can have no other than kindly feelings towards Captain Grose, if only in grateful remembrance of the fact that, thanks to his intimacy with the Poet, "Tam o' Shanter" was written, and first pub Friend of my life! my ardent spirit lished in "The Antiquities of Scotland."] burns, And all the tribute of my heart returns, HEAR, Land o' Cakes, and brither Scots, Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat's; If there's a hole in a' your coats, A chiel's amang you taking notes, If in your bounds ye chance to light By some auld houlet-haunted biggin', Of Eve's first fire he has a cinder; A broom-stick o' the witch of Endor, Forbye, he'll shape you aff, fu' gleg, It was a faulding jocteleg, But wad ye see him in his glee, For meikle glee and fun has he, Wi' de'ils, they say, Lord save's! col- Then set him down, and twa or three Guid fellows wi' him; And port, O port! shine thou a wee, And then ye'll see him! Now, by the powers o' verse and prose, Thou art a dainty chiel, O Grose ! Whae'er o' thee shall ill suppose, They sair misca' thee; I'd take the rascal by the nose, Wad say, Shame fa' thee! LINES WRITTEN IN A WRAPPER, ENCLOSING A Letter to CAPTAIN GROSE. [An impromptu addressed to another antiquary, by name Cardonnel, whose skill as a numismatist drew from Burns the allusion in the last stanza.] Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets, KEN ye ought o' Captain Grose? A towmont guid; Before the Flood. Igo and ago, And parritch-pats, and auld saut-backets, If he's amang his friends or foes? Iram, coram, dago. |