TO W. S **** * N, OCHILTREE, I GAT your letter, winsome Willie ; Your flatterin strain. May, 1785. But But I'se believe ye kindly meant it, I sud be laith to think ye hinted Ironic satire, sidelins sklented On my poor Musie ; Tho' in sic phraisin terms ye've penn'd it, My senses wad be in a creel, Should I but dare a hope to speel, Wi' Allan, or wi' Gilbertfield, The braes o' fame; A deathless name. Or Fergusson, the writer-chiel, (O Fergusson! thy glorious parts Ill suited law's dry, musty arts! My curse upon your whunstane hearts, The tythe o' what ye waste at cartes, Ye Enbrugh gentry! Wad stow'd his pantry !) Yet when a tale comes i' my head, Or lasses gie my heart a screed, As whyles they're like to be my deed, I kittle up my rustic reed; (O sad disease!) It gies me ease. Auld Auld Coila now may fidge fu' fain, She's gotten Poets o' her ain, Chiels wha their chanters winna hain, But tune their lays, Till echoes a' resound again Her weel-sung praise. Nae poet thought her worth his while, To set her name in measur'd style; She lay like some unkenn'd-of isle Beside New-Holland, Besouth Magellan. Or whare wild meeting oceans boil Ramsay an' famous Fergusson Gied Forth an' Tay a lift aboon; Yarrow an' Tweed, to monie a tune, Owre Scotland rings, While Irwin, Lugar, Ayr, an' Doon, Th' Ilissus, Tiber, Thames, an' Seine, Glide sweet in monie a tunefu' line! An' cock your crest, We'll gar our streams an' burnies shine We'll We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells, Her moors red-brown wi' heather bells, Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells, Where glorious Wallace Aft bure the gree, as story tells, Frae southron billies. At Wallace' name what Scottish blood But boils up in a spring-tide flood! Oft have our fearless fathers strode By Wallace' side, Still pressing onward, red-wat shod, O sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods, While thro' the braes the cushat croods 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! O Nature! a' thy shews an' forms To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms ! Whether the summer kindly warms Or winter howls, in gusty storms, Wi' life an' light, The lang, dark night! The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel he learn'd to wander, O sweet, to stray an' pensive ponder The warly race may drudge an' drive, Hog-shouther, jundie, stretch, an' strive, Let me fair Nature's face descrive, And I, wi' pleasure, Bum owre their treasure. Shall let the busy, grumbling hive Fareweel, 'my rhyme-composing brither!" We've been owre lang unkenn'd to ither : Now let us lay our heads thegither, May Envy wallop in a tether, In love fraternal: Black fiend, infernal ! |