6 "Where, where is love's fond, tender throe, 'With lordly honour's lofty brow, 'The pow'rs 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 pray'rs! Perhaps, this hour, in mis'ry's squalid nest, 'She strains your infant to her joyless breast, 'And with a mother's fears shrinks at the rock'ing 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-satisfy'd, keen nature's clam'rous call, 'Stretch'd on his straw he lays himself to sleep, 'While thro' 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 heard I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer But deep this truth impress'd my mind- The heart benevolent and kind EPISTLE EPISTLE ΤΟ DAVIE, A BROTHER POET* January I. WHILE winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw, And hing us owre the ingle, I set me down to pass the time, While * David Sillar, one of the club at Tarbolton, and author of a Volume of Poems in the Scottish dialect. E. While frosty winds blaw in the drift, I grudge a wee the great folk's gift, I tent less, and want less But hanker and canker, To see their cursed pride, II. It's hardly in a body's pow'r, To keep, at times, frae being sour, How best o' chiels are whiles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, And ken na how to wair't: But Davie, lad, ne'er fash your head, Tho' we hae little gear, We're fit to win our daily bread, Auld age ne'er mind a feg, * III. * Ramsay. III. To lie in kilns and barns at e'en Yet then content could make us blest; Ev'n then, sometimes we'd snatch a taste Of truest happiness. The honest heart that's free frae a' Intended fraud or guile, IV. What tho', like commoners of air, We wander out, we know not where, Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods, In days when daisies deck the ground, On |