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See stern oppression's iron grip,

Or mad ambition's gory hand,
Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip,
Woe, want, and murder o'er a land!
Even in the peaceful rural vale,

Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale,
How pamper'd luxury, flattery by her side,
The parasite empoisoning her ear,
With all the servile wretches in the rear,
Looks o'er proud property, extended wide;
And eyes the simple rustic hind,

Whose toil upholds the glittering show,

A creature of another kind,

Some coarser substance, unrefined,

Placed for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, below.
Where, where is love's fond, tender throe,
With lordly honour's lofty brow,

The powers you proudly own?
Is there, beneath love's noble name,
Can harbour, dark the selfish aim,
To bless himself alone!
Mark maiden innocence a prey
To love-pretending snares,
This boasted honour turns away,
Shunning soft pity's rising sway,

Regardless of the tears and unavailing prayers!
Perhaps this hour, in misery's squalid nest,

She strains your infant to her joyless breast,

And with a mother's fears shrinks at the rocking blast!
Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down,
Feel not a want but what yourselves create,
Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate,
Whom friends and fortune quite disown!
Ill satisfied keen nature's clamorous call,

Stretched on his straw he lays himself to sleep,
While through the ragged roof and chinky wall,
Chill o'er his slumbers piles the drifty heap!
Think on the dungeon's grim confine,
Where guilt and poor misfortune pine!
Guilt, erring man, relenting view!
But shall thy legal rage pursue

The wretch, already crushed low

By cruel fortune's undeserved blow?
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress,

A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!"

I hear nae mair, for Chanticleer

Shook off the pouthery snaw,

And hailed the morning with a cheer—

A cottage-rousing craw.

But deep this truth impressed my mind-
Through all his works abroad,

The heart benevolent and kind

The most resembles God.

"Neither the subjects of his poems," says Wordsworth, speaking of Burns, "nor his manner of handling them, allow us long to forget their author. On the basis of his human character, he has reared a poetic one, which, with more or less distinctness, presents itself to view in almost every part of his earlier, and, in my estimation, his most valuable verses. This poetic fabric, dug out of the quarry of genuine humanity, is airy and spiritual; and though the materials in some parts are coarse, and the disposition is often fantastic and irregular, yet the whole is agreeable and strikingly attractive." The voice which the Poet hears amid the winter storm, utters sentiments in unison with those which the Poet claims as his own in the introduction. He prepares us for sympathizing in the sufferings of the human race by the description of the rivulets choked with snow; the cattle crowding to the shelter of some precipitous bank, and the birds, which cheered him with their songs in summer, sitting chittering among the leafless trees. Elsewhere

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"The birds sit chittering on the thorn,

A' day they dined but sparely."

This," says Carlyle, "is worth several homilies on mercy, for it is the voice of mercy herself. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy; his soul rushes forth into all the realms of being: nothing that has existence can be indifferent to him."

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THE JOLLY BEGGARS.

A CANTATA.

RECITATIVO.

WHEN lyart leaves bestrow the yird,
Or wavering like the bauckie-bird,
Bedim cauld Boreas' blast;

When hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte
And infant frosts begin to bite,
In hoary cranreuch drest;

Ae night at e'en a merry core
O' randie, gangrel bodies,

In Poosie-Nansie's held the splore,
To drink their orra duddies:
Wi' quaffing and laughing,
They ranted and they sang;
Wi' jumping and thumping,
The vera girdle rang.

First, neist the fire, in auld red rags, Ane sat, weel brac'd wi' mealy bags,

And knapsack a' in order;

His doxy lay within his arm,

Wi' usquebae an' blankets warm

She blinket on her sodger:

An' ay he gies the tozie drab
The tither skelpin' kiss,

While she held up her greedy gab
Just like an aumos dish.

Ilk smack still, did crack still,
Just like a cadger's whip,
Then staggering and swaggering
He roar'd this ditty up—

AIR.

Tune-" Soldiers' Joy."

I AM a son of Mars, who have been in many wars,
And show my cuts and scars wherever I come;
This here was for a wench, and that other in a trench,
When welcoming the French at the sound of the drum.
Lal de daudle, &c.

My 'prenticeship I past where my leader breath'd his last,

When the bloody die was cast on the heights of Abram; I serv'd out my trade when the gallant game was play'd, And the Moro low was laid at the sound of the drum. Lal de daudle, &c.

I lastly was with Curtis, among the floating batt❜ries,
And there I left for witness an arm and a limb;
Yet let my country need me, with Elliot to head me,
I'd clatter on my stumps at the sound of a drum.

Lal de daudle, &c.

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