Yes, pour, ye warblers, pour the notes of woe!
And soothe the Virtues weeping o'er his bier:
The man of worth, who has not left his peer,
Is in his narrow house, for ever darkly low.
Thee, Spring, again with joy shall others greet,
Me, mem'ry of my loss will only meet.

ON PASTORAL POETRY.

HAIL, Poesie! thou nymph reserved!
In chase o' thee, what crowds hae swerved
Frae common sense, or sunk enerved

'Mang heaps o' clavers!

And och o'er aft thy joes hae starved,

Mid a' thy favours!

Say, Lassie, why thy train amang,
While loud the trump's heroic clang,
And sock or buskin skelp alang

To death or marriage;

Scarce ane has tried the shepherd-sang,

But wi' miscarriage?

In Homer's craft Jock Milton thrives;
Æschylus' pen Will Shakespeare drives;
Wee Pope, the knurlin, till him rives

Horatian fame;

In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives

E'en Sappho's flame.

But thee, Theocritus, wha matches?
They're no herd's ballats, Maro's catches;
Squire Pope but busks his skinklin patches

O' heathen tatters:

I pass by hunders, nameless wretches,

That ape their betters.

In this braw age o' wit and lear,

Will nane the shepherd's whistle mair
Blaw sweetly in its native air

And rural grace;

And, wi' the far-famed Grecian, share

A rival place?

Yes! there is ane; a Scottish callan!
There's ane: come forrit, honest Allan!
Thou need na jouk behint the hallan,

A chiel sae clever;

The teeth o' Time may gnaw Tantallan,
But thou's for ever.

Thou paints auld Nature to the nines,
In thy sweet Caledonian lines;

Nae gowden stream through myrtles twines,
Where Philomel,

While nightly breezes sweep the vines,

Her griefs will tell!

In gowany glens thy burnie strays,
Where bonnie lasses bleach their claes:
Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes,

Wi' hawthorns gray, Where blackbirds join the shepherd's lays At close o' day.

Thy rural loves are Nature's sel';
Nae bombast spates o' nonsense swell;
Nae snap conceits, but that sweet spell
O' witchin' love,

That charm that can the strongest quell,
The sternest move.

POEM ON LIFE.

ADDRESSED TO COLONEL DE PEYSTER, DUMFRIES, 1796.

My honoured Colonel, deep I feel
Your interest in the poet's weal;
Ah! now sma' heart hae I to speel

The steep Parnassus

Surrounded thus by bolus pill

And potion glasses.

Oh, what a canty warld were it,

Would pain and care, and sickness spare it;
And fortune favour worth and merit
As they deserve!

(And aye a rowth, roast beef and claret;
Syne wha wad starve?)

Dame Life, though fiction out may trick her,
And in paste gems and frippery deck her;
Oh! flickering, feeble, and unsicker,

I've found her still,

Aye wavering, like the willow-wicker,

'Tween good and ill.

Then that cursed carmagnole, auld Satan,
Watches, like baudrans by a rattan,
Our sinfu' saul to get a claut on

Wi' felon ire;

Syne, whip! his tail ye'll ne'er cast saut on,
He's off like fire.

Ah, Nick! ah, Nick! it is na fair,
First showing us the tempting ware,
Bright wines and bonnie lasses rare,
To put us daft;

Syne weave, unseen, thy spider snare
O' hell's damned waft.

Poor man, the fly, aft bizzes by,
And aft as chance he comes thee nigh,
Thy auld damned elbow yeuks wi' joy
And hellish pleasure;

Already in thy fancy's eye,

Thy sicker treasure.

Soon heels o'er gowdie! in he gangs,
And like a sheep-head on a tangs,
Thy girning laugh enjoys his pangs

And murdering wrestle,

As dangling in the wind he hangs

A gibbet's tassel.

But lest you think I am uncivil,

To plague you with this draunting drivel,
Abjuring a' intentions evil,

I quat my pen :

The Lord preserve us frae the devil!
Amen! Amen!

A VISION.

As I stood by yon roofless tower,
Where the wa'-flower scents the dewy air,
Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower,
And tells the midnight moon her care;

The winds were laid, the air was still,
The stars they shot alang the sky;
The fox was howling on the hill,

And the distant echoing glens reply.

The stream, adown its hazelly path,
Was rushing by the ruined wa's,
Hasting to join the sweeping Nith,
Whase distant roaring swells and fa's.

The cauld blue north was streaming forth
Her lights, wi' hissing eerie din,
Athort the lift they start and shift,
Like fortune's favours, tint as win.

By heedless chance I turned mine eyes,
And by the moonbeam, shook to see
A stern and stalwart ghaist arise,
Attired as minstrels wont to be.

Had I a statue been o' stane,

His darin' look had daunted me; And on his bonnet graved was plain, The sacred posie-Libertie!

And frae his harp sic strains did flow,
Might roused the slumbering dead to hear;
But oh, it was a tale of woe,

As ever met a Briton's ear!

He sang wi' joy the former day,

He weeping wailed his latter times,
But what he said it was nae play,
I winna venture 't in my rhymes.

TAM SAMSON'S ELEGY.

HAS auld Kilmarnock seen the Deil?
Or great Mackinlay thrawn his heel?
Or Robinson again grown weel,

To preach and read? 'Na, waur than a'!' cries ilka chiel,

'Tam Samson's dead!'