"Tell him, he was a master kin', "Oh, bid him save their harmless lives Frae dogs, an' tods, an' butchers' knives! "An' may they never learn the gaets Of ither vile, wanrestfu' pets! "Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail blether." This said, poor Mailie turn'd her head, POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY. To slink through slaps, an' reave an' steal So wives will gi'e them bits o' bread, "My poor toop-lamb, my son an' heir, "An' niest my yowie, silly thing, Poor Mailie's dead! It's no the loss o' warl's gear, The mourning weed: Through a' the toun she trotted by him; Than Mailie dead. I wat she was a sheep o' sense, "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, Sin' Mailie's dead. Or, if he wanders up the howe, 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 But the cheerful spring came kindly on, John Barleycorn got up again, 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. 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 Yet sure I am, that known to Thee Irvine-Burns, in a letter expressive throughout O THOU unknown, Almighty Cause 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 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, 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 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, In hamely westlin' jingle. I grudge a wee the great folks' gift, That live sae bien an' snug: |