LINES WRITTEN ON A PANE OF GLASS,

ON THE OCCASION OF A NATIONAL THANKSGIVING FOR A
NAVAL VICTORY.

YE hypocrites! are these your pranks,
To murder men, and gie God thanks?
For shame! gie o'er, proceed no further-
God won't accept your thanks for murther!

LINES ON STIRLING.

WRITTEN ON A WINDOW IN WINGATE'S INN THERE.

HERE Stuarts once in glory reign'd,
And laws for Scotia's weel ordain'd;
But now unroof'd their palace stands,
Their sceptre's sway'd by foreign hands.
The Stuarts' native race is gone!

A race outlandish fills their throne

An idiot race, to honour lost :

Who know them best, despise them most.

Burns, who was then a zealous Jacobite, being reproved by a friend for the above lines, replied, "I shall reprove myself;" and immediately wrote the following lines on the same pane :—

THE REPROOF.

RASH mortal, and slanderous poet, thy name

Shall no longer appear in the records of fame;

Dost not know that old Mansfield, who writes like the Bible, Says the more 'tis a truth, sir, the more 'tis a libel?

REPLY TO A CLERGYMAN,

WHO WROTE A POETICAL PHILIPPIC AGAINST THE
FOREGOING LINES ON STIRLING.

LIKE Æsop's lion, Burns says, 'Sore I feel
All others' scorn-but damn that ass's heel.'

LINES

WRITTEN ON A WINDOW, AT THE KING'S ARMS TAVERN,

DUMFRIES.

YE men of wit and wealth, why all this sneering
'Gainst poor excisemen? give the cause a hearing ;
What are your landlords' rent-rolls ?-taxing ledgers;
What premiers? what even monarchs ?—mighty gaugers;
Nay, what are priests, those seeming-godly wisemen,
What are they, pray, but spiritual excisemen?

LINES WRITTEN AND PRESENTED TO MRS

KEMBLE,

ON SEEING HER IN THE CHARACTER OF YARICO,

DUMFRIES THEATRE, 1794.

KEMBLE, thou cur❜st my unbelief

Of Moses and his rod;

At Yarico's sweet notes of grief,
The rock with tears had flow'd.

LINES

WRITTEN EXTEMPORE IN A LADY'S POCKET-BOOK.

GRANT me, indulgent Heaven! that I may live
To see the miscreants feel the pains they give;
Deal Freedom's sacred treasures free as air,
Till slave and despot be but things which were.

LINES WRITTEN BY BURNS WHILE ON HIS DEATH-BED,

TO JOHN RANKINE, AYRSHIRE, AND FORWARDED TO HIM
IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE POET'S DEATH.

HE who of Rankine sang lies stiff and dead,
And a green grassy hillock hides his head;
Alas! alas! an awful change indeed!

THE BOOK-WORMS.

THROUGH and through the inspirèd leaves,
Ye maggots, make your windings;
But, oh! respect his lordship's taste,
And spare his golden bindings!

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.

THE Solemn League and Covenant

Cost Scotland blood-cost Scotland tears;

But it seal'd freedom's sacred cause-
If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneers.

THE TRUE LOYAL NATIVES.1

YE true Loyal Natives,' attend to my song;
In uproar and riot rejoice the night long;
From envy and hatred your corps is exempt;

But where is your shield from the darts of contempt?

1 'Loyal Natives:' a club in Dumfries, one of whose members sent an abusive epigram to Burns, who replied in the above impromptu.

VERSES ADDRESSED TO J. RANKINE,

ON HIS WRITING TO THE POET THAT A GIRL IN THAT PART OF THE COUNTRY WAS WITH CHILD BY HIM.

1 I AM a keeper of the law

In some sma' points, although not a';
Some people tell me gin I fa',

Ae way or ither,

The breaking of ae point, though sma',

Breaks a' thegither.

2 I hae been in for't ance or twice, And winna say o'er far for thrice, Yet never met with that surprise

That broke my rest,

But now a rumour's like to rise,

A whaup 's i' the nest.

ON ROBERT RIDDEL, ESQ.

To Riddel, much lamented man,
This ivied cot was dear;
Reader, dost value matchless worth?

This ivied cot revere.

INSCRIPTION ON A GOBLET

BELONGING TO MR SYME.

THERE's death in the cup-sae beware!
Nay, more there is danger in touching;
But wha can avoid the fell snare?

The man and his wine's sae bewitching!

EPIGRAMS.

1 WHOE'ER he be that sojourns here,
I pity much his case,
Unless he come to wait upon

The Lord their God, his Grace.

2 There's naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger;

If Providence has sent me here,
'Twas surely in his anger.1

ON ANDREW TURNER.

In se'enteen hundred forty-nine
Satan took stuff to make a swine,
And cuist it in a corner;
But wilily he changed his plan,
And shaped it something like a man,
And ca'd it Andrew Turner.

ON A HENPECKED COUNTRY SQUIRE.

1 0 Death, hadst thou but spared his life
Whom we this day lament!
We freely wad exchanged the wife,
And a' been weel content.

2 E'en as he is, cauld in his graff,
The swap we yet will do 't;
Tak thou the carlin's carcase aff,

Thou 'se get the saul to boot.

This was written at Inverary, on an imaginary slight at the inn, by the indignant poet.