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"Tell him, he was a master kin',
An' aye was guid to me and mine;
An' now my dying charge I gi'e him,
My helpless lambs I trust them wi' him.

"Oh, bid him save their harmless lives

Frae dogs, an' tods, an' butchers' knives!
But gi'e them guid cow-milk their fill,
Till they be fit to fend themsel';
An' tent them duly, e'en an' morn,
Wi' teats o' hay, an' rips o' corn.

"An' may they never learn the gaets Of ither vile, wanrestfu' pets!

"Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail
To tell my master a' my tale;
An' bid him burn this cursed tether,
An', for thy pains, thou'se get my

blether."

This said, poor Mailie turn'd her head,
An' closed her een amang the dead.

POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY.
LAMENT in rhyme, lament in prose,
Wi' saut tears trickling down your nose;
Our bardie's fate is at a close,
Past a' remead ;

To slink through slaps, an' reave an' steal
At stacks o' pease, or stocks o' kail.
So may they, like their great forbears,
For mony a year come through the sheers: The last sad cape-stane of his woes:

So wives will gi'e them bits o' bread,
An' bairns greet for them when they're
dead.

"My poor toop-lamb, my son an' heir,
Oh, bid him breed him up wi' care!
An' if he live to be a beast,
To pit some havins in his breast!
An' warn him, what I winna name,
To stay content wi' yowes at hame ;
An' no to rin n' wear his cloots,
Like ither menseless, graceless brutes.

"An' niest my yowie, silly thing,
Gude keep thee frae a tether string!
Oh, may thou ne'er forgather up,
Wi' ony blastit, moorland toop;
But aye keep mind to moop an' mell
Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel'!

Poor Mailie's dead!

It's no the loss o' warl's gear,
That could sae bitter draw the tear,
Or mak' our bardie, dowie, wear

The mourning weed:
He's lost a friend and neebor dear
In Mailie dead.

Through a' the toun she trotted by him;
A lang half-mile she could descry him;
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
She ran wi' speed;
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er came nigh
him

Than Mailie dead.

I wat she was a sheep o' sense,
An' could behave hersel' wi' mense;
I'll say 't, she never brak a fence,
Through thievish greed.

"And now, my bairns, wi' my last Our bardie, lanely, keeps the spence

breath,

I lea'e my blessin' wi' you baith:

An' when you think upo' your mither,
Mind to be kin' to ane anither.

Sin' Mailie's dead.

Or, if he wanders up the howe,
Her living image, in her yowe,

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THEY took a plough and ploughed him They wasted, o'er a scorching flame,

down,

Put clods upon his head,

An' they ha'e sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerful spring came kindly on,
And showers began to fall;

John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surprised them all.

The marrow of his bones;

But a miller used him worst of all,

For he crushed him 'tween two stones.

And they ha'e ta'en his very heart's blood,

And drank it round and round; And still the more and more they drank, Their joy did more abound.

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45

A PRAYER,

UNDER THE PRESSURE OF VIOLENT ANGUISH.

A PRAYER

IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH.

[An entry, under the poet's hand, in his manuscript journal indicates, with painful distinctness, the circumstances out of which these verses sprang into existence. "A Prayer "-these are his words—“when fainting fits and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy or some other dangerous disorder, which indeed still threatens me, first put nature on the alarm." Writing to his father in the December of 1781-the close of the

[Written probably in 1781, when for six months together Burns resided at Irvine as a flax-dresser. We may judge so at least from an allusion of his to that episode in his career, where he says in his Autobiography: "Rhyme I had [then] given up, except some religious pieces which are in print,"-referring obviously to this and to the four effusions by which it is immediately followed. Elsewhere among his papers Burns, under date March, 1784-his father having died in the pre-very year in which these lines were penned at ceding month-entered the subjoined lines in his Common Place Book, with this sorrowful memorandum prefixed :-"There was a period of my life that my spirit was broken by repeated losses and disasters, which threatened, and indeed effected, the utter ruin of my fortune. My body, too, was attacked by that most dreadful distemper, a hypochondria, or confirmed melancholy. In this wretched state, the recollection of which makes me yet shudder, I hung my harp on the willow trees, except in some lucid intervals, in one of which I composed the following."]

O THOU great Being! what Thou art
Surpasses me to know;

Yet sure I am, that known to Thee
Are all Thy works below,

Irvine-Burns, in a letter expressive throughout
of the greatest anguish of mind, indicates
clearly enough the mood which in the subjoined
verses found metrical expression:-"Sometimes,
indeed, when for an hour or two my spirits are a
little lightened, I glimmer a little into futurity;
but my only pleasurable employment is looking
backwards and forwards in a moral and religious
way: I am quite transported at the thought that
ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall bid an
eternal adieu to all the pains and disquietudes
of this weary life."]

O THOU unknown, Almighty Cause
Of all my hope and fear !
In whose dread presence, ere an hour,
Perhaps I must appear!

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O Thou, great Governor of all below! If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,

Or still the tumult of the raging sea; With that controlling power assist e'en me,

Those headlong furious passions to confine;

For all unfit I feel my powers to be, To rule their torrent in th' allowed line;

WHY am I loth to leave this earthly Oh, aid me with thy help, Omnipotence

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Thou layest them, with all their cares, In everlasting sleep;

As with a flood Thou tak'st them off With overwhelming sweep.

They flourish like the morning flower,
In beauty's pride arrayed;
But long ere night, cut down it lies,
All withered and decayed.

EPISTLE TO DAVIE,

A BROTHER Poet.

[Written in January, 1785, this epistle was addressed to David Sillar, whose father at one time tenanted the farm of Spittleside, about two miles from Lochlea, the farm-house of William Burness, and less than a mile from Tarbolton. Davie, for all Burns dubs him a poet, was no more, as the result proved, than a very lowly poetaster. Fired into emulation of the directest, and therefore of the most audacious, kind with his senior by a twelvemonth, David Sillar, in 1789, just three years after his friend's marvellous triumph, had the temerity to publish at Kilmarnock, not a volume of poems, but of the veriest doggerel. Instead of helping him to fame, it only landed him in bankruptcy. After passing through a number of vicissitudes, being at one time a village grocer and at another a country-school

That Power which raised and still up-master, Davie eventually became exceedingly

holds

This universal frame,

From countless, unbeginning time
Was ever still the same.

Those mighty periods of years

Which seem to us so vast, Appear no more before Thy sight Than yesterday that's past.

Thou giv'st the word: Thy creature,

inan,

Is to existence brought : Again Thou say'st, "Ye sons of men, Return ye into nought!"

prosperous. Towards the end of his career he was enrolled as a magistrate, and died in May, 1830, at the age of seventy.]

WHILE winds frae aff Ben Lomond

blaw,

And bar the doors wi' driving snaw,

And hing us owre the ingle,

I set me down to pass the time,
And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme,

In hamely westlin' jingle.
While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
Ben to the chimla lug,

I grudge a wee the great folks' gift, That live sae bien an' snug:

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