The Complete Works of Robert Burns - LightNovelsOnl.com
You're reading novel online at LightNovelsOnl.com. Please use the follow button to get notifications about your favorite novels and its latest chapters so you can come back anytime and won't miss anything.
TO THE SAME,
ON THE AUTHOR BEING THREATENED WITH HIS
RESENTMENT.
Spare me thy vengeance, Galloway, In quiet let me live: I ask no kindness at thy hand, For thou hast none to give.
LXII.
ON A COUNTRY LAIRD.
[Mr. Maxwell, of Cardoness, afterwards Sir David, exposed himself to the rhyming wrath of Burns, by his activity in the contested elections of Heron.]
Bless Jesus Christ, O Cardoness, With grateful lifted eyes, Who said that not the soul alone But body too, must rise: For had he said, "the soul alone From death I will deliver;"
Alas! alas! O Cardoness, Then thou hadst slept for ever.
LXIII.
ON JOHN BUSHBY.
[Burns, in his harshest lampoons, always admitted the talents of Bushby: the peasantry, who hate all clever attorneys, loved to handle his character with unsparing severity.]
Here lies John Bushby, honest man!
Cheat him, Devil, gin ye can.
LXIV.
THE TRUE LOYAL NATIVES.
[At a dinner-party, where politics ran high, lines signed by men who called themselves the true loyal natives of Dumfries, were handed to Burns: he took a pencil, and at once wrote this reply.]
Ye true "Loyal Natives," attend to my song, In uproar and riot rejoice the night long; From envy or hatred your corps is exempt, But where is your s.h.i.+eld from the darts of contempt?
LXV.
ON A SUICIDE.
[Burns was observed by my friend, Dr. Copland Hutchinson, to fix, one morning, a bit of paper on the grave of a person who had committed suicide: on the paper these lines were pencilled.]
Earth'd up here lies an imp o' h.e.l.l, Planted by Satan's dibble-- Poor silly wretch, he's d.a.m.n'd himsel'
To save the Lord the trouble.
LXVI.
EXTEMPORE
PINNED ON A LADY'S COUCH.
["Printed," says Sir Harris Nicolas, "from a copy in Burns's handwriting," a slight alteration in the last line is made from an oral version.]
If you rattle along like your mistress's tongue, Your speed will outrival the dart: But, a fly for your load, you'll break down on the road If your stuff has the rot, like her heart.
LXVII.
LINES
TO JOHN RANKINE.
[These lines were said to have been written by the poet to Rankine, of Adamhill, with orders to forward them when he died.]
He who of Rankine sang lies stiff and dead, And a green gra.s.sy hillock hides his head; Alas! alas! a devilish change indeed.
