Heaven spare you lang to kiss the breath And God bless young Dunaskin's laird, And may he wear an auld man's beard, YOUR news and review, Sir, I've read through and through, Sir, With little admiring or blaming: The papers are barren of home-news or foreign, Our friends the reviewers, those chippers and hewers, But of meet, or unmeet, in a fabrick complete, My goose-quill too rude is to tell all your goodness Would to God I had one like a beam of the sun, To TERRAUGHTY,* On his Birth-Day. HEALTH to the Maxwell's vet'ran Chief! This natal morn, I see thy life is stuff o' prief, Scarce quite half worn.- This day thou metes threescore eleven, To ilka POET,) On thee a tack o' seven times seven Will yet bestow it. If envious buckies view wi' sorrow Thy lengthen'd days on this blest morrow, Nine miles an hour, Rake them, like Sodom and Gomorrah, In brunstane stoure But for thy friends, and they are mony, In social glee, Wi' mornings blythe and e'enings funny Fareweef, auld birkie! Lord be near ye, If neist my heart I dinna wear ye While BURNS they ca' me. * Mr. Maxwell, of Terraughty, near Dumfries. To a LADY, With a present of a pair of Drinking Glasses. FAIR Empress of the Poet's soul, And fill them high with generous juice, To those who love us!"-second fill; But not to those whom we love; Lest we love those who love not us! A third" to thee and me, love!" MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. TRAGIC FRAGMENT. IN my early years nothing less would serve me than courting the tragic Muse.-I was, I think, about eighteen or nineteen when I sketched the outlines of a tragedy forsooth; but the bursting of a cloud of family misfortunes, which had for some time threatened us, prevented my farther progress. In those days I never wrote down any thing; except a speech or two, the whole has escaped my memory.-The following, which I most distinctly remember, was an exclamation from a great character:-great in occasional instances of generosity, and daring at times in villainies. He is supposed to meet with a child of misery, and exclaims to himself "All devil as I am, a damned wretch, "A harden'd, stubborn, unrepenting villain, "I view the helpless children of distress. 66 Rejoicing in the honest man's destruction, "Whose unsubmitting heart was all his crime. "Even you, ye helpless crew, I pity you; "Ye, whom the seeming good think sin to pity: "Ye poor, despis'd, abandon'd vagabonds, "Whom vice, as usual, has turn'd o'er to ruin. O, but for kind, tho' ill-requited friends, "I had been driven forth like you forlorn, "The most detested, worthless wretch among you!" THE VOWELS-A TALE. 'Twas where the birch and sounding thong are ply'd, The noisy domicile of pedant pride; Where ignorance her darkening vapour throws, His awful chair of state resolves to mount, First enter'd A, grave, broad, solemn wight, The cobweb'd gothic dome resounded, Y! As trembling U stood staring all aghast, |