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Heaven spare you lang to kiss the breath
O' mony flow'ry simmers!

And bless your bonnie lasses baith,
I'm tald they're loosome kimmers!

And God bless young Dunaskin's laird,
The blossom of our gentry!

And may he wear an auld man's beard
A credit to his country.

To CAPTAIN RIDDLE, Glenriddel.

(Extempore Lines on returning a Newspaper.)

Ellisland, Monday Evening.

Your news and review, Sir, I've read through and through, Sir,

With little admiring or blaming ;

The papers are barren of home-news or foreign, No murders or rapes worth the naming.

Our friends the reviewers, those chippers and hewers,

Are judges of mortar and stone, Sir;

But of meet, or unmeet, in a fabrick complete,
I'll boldly pronounce they are none, Sir.

My goose-quill too rude is to tell your goodness Bestowed on your servant the Poet:

Would to God I had one like a beam of the sun, And then all the world, Sir, should know it! VOL. XXXIX.

K

To TERRAUGHTY,* on his Birth-Day,

HEALTH to the Maxwells' vet'ran chief!
Health, ay unsour'd by care or grief:
Inspir'd, I turn'd Fate's sibyl leaf,
This natal morn,

I see thy life is stuff o' prief,

Scarce quite half worn.

This day thou metes threescore eleven,
And I can tell that bounteous heaven
(The second sight, ye ken, is giv'n
To ilka Poet)

On thee a tack o' seven times seven
Will yet bestow it.

If envious buckies view wi' sorrow
Thy lengthen'd days on this blest morrow,
May desolation's lang teeth'd harrow,

Nine miles an hour,

Rake them, like Sodom and Gomorrah,
In brunstane stoure-

But for thy friends, and they are mony,
Baith honest men and lassies bonie,
May couthie fortune, kind and cannie,
In social glee,

Wi' mornings blithe and e'enings funny

Bless them and thee!

* Mr. Maxwell, of Terraughty, near Dumfries.

Fareweel, auld birkie! Lord be near ye,
And then the Deil he daur na steer ye:
Your friends ay love, your faes ay fear ye,
For me, shame fa' me,

If neist my heart I dinna wear ye

While Burns they ca' me.

To A LADY,

With a Present of a Pair of Drinking Glasses.

FAIR Empress of the Poet's soul,

And Queen of Poetesses; Clarinda, take this little boon,

This humble pair of glasses.

And fill them high with generous juice,
As generous as your mind;

And pledge me in the generous toast-
The whole of human kind!

To those who love us !'-second fill; But not to those whom we love; Lest we love those who love not us!A third- to thee and me, love!

THE VOWELS,-A Tale.

'Twas where the birch and sounding thong are
The noisy domicile of pedant pride; [ply'd,
Where ignorance her darkening vapour throws,
And cruelty directs the thickening blows;
Upon a time, Sir Abece the great,
In all his pedagogic powers elate,

His awful chair of state resolves to mount,
And call the trembling vowels to account.

First enter'd A, a grave, broad, solemn wight, But, ah! deform'd, dishonest to the sight! His twisted head look'd backward on his way, And flagrant from the scourge, he grunted ai! Reluctant E stalk'd in; with piteous grace The justling tears ran down his honest face! That name, that well-worn name, and all his own, Pale he surrenders at the tyrant's throne! The pedant stifles keen the Roman sound Not all his mongrel diphthongs can compound; And next the title following close behind, He to the nameless, ghastly wretch assign'd. The cobweb'd gothic dome resounded Y! In sullen vengeance, I, disdain'd, reply: The pedant swung his felon cudgel round, And knock'd the groaning vowel to the ground! In rueful apprehension enter'd O, The wailing minstrel of despairing woe; The' Inquisitor of Spain the most expert,

Might there have learnt new mysteries of his art:

So grim, deform'd, with horrors entering U,
His dearest friend and brother scarcely knew!
As trembling U stood staring all aghast,
The pedant in his left hand clutch'd him fast,
In helpless infants' tears he dipp'd his right,
Baptiz'd him eu, and kick'd him from his sight.

SKETCH.*

A LITTLE, upright, pert, tart, tripping wight,
And still his precious self his dear delight:
Who loves his own smart shadow in the streets,
Better than e'er the fairest she he meets.
A man of fashion too, he made his tour,
Learn'd vive la bagatelle, et vive l'amour;
So travell❜d monkeys their grimace improve,
Polish their grin, nay, sigh for ladies' tove.
Much specious lore, but little understood;
Veneering oft outshines the solid wood :
His solid sense-by inches you must tell,
But mete his cunning by the old Scots ell;
His meddling vanity, a busy fiend,
Still making work his selfish craft must mend.

*This sketch seems to be one of a Series, intended for a projected work, under the title of The Poet's Progress,' This character was sent as a specimen, accompanied by a letter to Professor Dugald Stewart, in which it is thus noticed. The fragment beginning, A little, upright, pert, tart, &c. I have not shown to any man living, till I now send it to you. It forms the postulata, the axioms, the definition of a character, which, if it appear at all, shall be placed in a variety of lights. This particu lar part I send you merely as a sample of my hand at portrait sketching,'

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