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braes the cushat croods

      With wailfu’ cry!

      Ev’n winter bleak has charms to me

      When winds rave thro’ the naked tree;

      Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree

      Are hoary gray:

      Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee,

      Dark’ning the day.

      O Nature! a’ thy shews an’ forms

      To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms!

      Whether the summer kindly warms,

      Wi’ life an’ light,

      Or winter howls, in gusty storms,

      The lang, dark night!

      The muse, nae Poet ever fand her,

      ’Till by himsel’ he learn’d to wander,

      Adown some trotting burn’s meander,

      An’ no think lang;

      O sweet, to stray an’ pensive ponder

      A heart-felt sang!

      The warly race may drudge an’ drive,

      Hog-shouther, jundie, stretch an’ strive,

      Let me fair Nature’s face descrive,

      And I, wi’ pleasure,

      Shall let the busy, grumbling hive

      Bum owre their treasure.

      Fareweel, my “rhyme-composing brither!”

      We’ve been owre lang unkenn’d to ither:

      Now let us lay our heads thegither,

      In love fraternal;

      May envy wallop in a tether,

      Black fiend, infernal!

      While Highlandmen hate tolls an’ taxes;

      While moorlan’ herds like guid fat braxies;

      While terra firma, on her axes

      Diurnal turns,

      Count on a friend, in faith an’ practice,

      In Robert Burns.

      POSTSCRIPT

      My memory’s no worth a preen:

      I had amaist forgotten clean,

      Ye bade me write you what they mean,

      By this New Light,

      ‘Bout which our herds sae aft hae been,

      Maist like to fight.

      In days when mankind were but callans,

      At grammar, logic, an’ sic talents,

      They took nae pains their speech to balance,

      Or rules to gie,

      But spak their thoughts in plain, braid Lallans,

      Like you or me.

      In thae auld times, they thought the moon,

      Just like a sark, or pair o’ shoon,

      Wore by degrees, ’till her last roon,

      Gaed past their viewing,

      An’ shortly after she was done,

      They gat a new one.

      This past for certain—undisputed;

      It ne’er cam i’ their heads to doubt it,

      ’Till chiels gat up an’ wad confute it,

      An’ ca’d it wrang;

      An’ muckle din there was about it,

      Baith loud an’ lang.

      Some herds, weel learn’d upo’ the beuk,

      Wad threap auld folk the thing misteuk;

      For ’twas the auld moon turned a neuk,

      An’ out o’ sight,

      An’ backlins-comin’, to the leuk,

      She grew mair bright.

      This was deny’d, it was affirm’d;

      The herds an’ hissels were alarm’d:

      The rev’rend gray-beards rav’d and storm’d

      That beardless laddies

      Should think they better were inform’d

      Than their auld daddies.

      Frae less to mair it gaed to sticks;

      Frae words an’ aiths to clours an’ nicks,

      An’ monie a fallow gat his licks,

      Wi’ hearty crunt;

      An’ some, to learn them for their tricks,

      Were hang’d an’ brunt.

      This game was play’d in monie lands,

      An’ Auld Light caddies bure sic hands,

      That, faith, the youngsters took the sands

      Wi’ nimble shanks,

      ’Till lairds forbade, by strict commands,

      Sic bluidy pranks.

      But New Light herds gat sic a cowe,

      Folk thought them ruin’d stick-an’-stowe,

      Till now amaist on every knowe,

      Ye’ll find ane plac’d;

      An’ some their New Light fair avow,

      Just quite barefac’d.

      Nae doubt the Auld Light flocks are bleatin’;

      Their zealous herds are vex’d an’ sweatin’:

      Mysel’, I’ve even seen them greetin’

      Wi’ girnin’ spite,

      To hear the moon sae sadly lie’d on

      By word an’ write.

      But shortly they will cowe the loons;

      Some Auld Light herds in neibor towns

      Are mind’t in things they ca’ balloons,

      To tak a flight,

      An’ stay ae month amang the moons

      And see them right.

      Guid observation they will gie them:

      An’ when the auld moon’s gaun to lea’e them,

      The hindmost shaird, they’ll fetch it wi’ them,

      Just i’ their pouch,

      An’ when the New Light billies see them,

      I think they’ll crouch!

      Sae, ye observe that a’ this clatter

      Is naething but a “moonshine matter;”

      But tho’ dull prose-folk Latin splatter

      In logic tulzie,

      I hope we bardies ken some better

      Than mind sic brulzie.

      XXXIII. ADDRESS TO AN ILLEGITIMATE CHILD

      [This hasty and not very decorous effusion, was originally entitled “The Poet’s Welcome; or, Rab the Rhymer’s Address to his Bastard Child.” A copy, with the more softened, but less expressive title, was published by Stewart, in 1801, and is alluded to by Burns himself, in his biographical letter to Moore. “Bonnie Betty,” the mother of the “sonsie-smirking, dear-bought Bess,” of the Inventory, lived in Largieside: to support this daughter the poet made over the copyright of his works when he proposed to go to the West Indies. She lived to be a woman, and to marry one John Bishop, overseer at Polkemmet, where she died in 1817. It is said she resembled Burns quite as much as any of the rest of his children.]

      Thou’s welcome, wean, mischanter fa’ me,

      If

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