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As youth and love with sprightly dance,
Beneath thy morning star advance,
Pleasure with her siren air

y delude the thoughtless pair;
Prudence bless Enjoyment's cup,
"aptured sip, and sip it up.

ay grows warm and high,
meridian flaming nigh,

ost thou spurn the humble vale? Life's proud summits would'st thou scale? Check thy climbing step, elate,

Evils lurk in felon wait:
Dangers eagle-pinioned, bold,
Soar around each cliffy hold,

While cheerful Peace, with linnet song,
Chants the lowly dells among.

As the shades of ev'ning close,
Beck'ning thee to long repose;
As life itself becomes disease,
Seek the chimney-nook of ease;
There ruminate with sober thought,

On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought,
And teach the sportive younkers round,
Saws of experience, sage and sound.

Say, man's true, genuine estimate,

The grand criterion of his fate,
Is not-Art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow?

Did many talents gild thy span?
Or frugal Nature grudge thee one?
Tell them, and press it on their mind,
As thou thyself must shortly find,
The smile or frown of awful Heav'n
To virtue or to vice is given.
Say, to be just, and kind, and wise,
There solid self-enjoyment lies;
That foolish, selfish, faithless ways
Lead to be wretched, vile, and base.

Thus resigned and quiet, creep
To the bed of lasting sleep;

Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake,
Night, where dawn shall never break,
Till future life, future no more,
To light and joy the good restore,
To light and joy unknown before.
Stranger, go! Heav'n be thy guide!
Quod the Bedesman of Nithside!

Not so the idle Muses' mad-cap train,

Not such the workings of their moon-struck brain.
I dread thee, fate, relentless and severe,
With all a poet's, husband's, father's fear!
Already one strong hold of hope is lost,
Glencairn, the truly noble, lies in dust;
(Fled, like the sun eclipsed as noon appears,
And left us darkling in a world of tears :)
O hear my ardent, grateful, selfish prayer!—
Fintry, my other stay, long bless and spare!
Through a long life his hopes and wishes crown
And bright in cloudless skies his sun go down!
May bliss domestic smooth his private path,
Give energy to life, and soothe his latest breath,
With many a filial tear circling the bed of death!

LAMENTATION

FOR THE DEATH OF MRS FERGUSSON OF CRAIGDARROCH'S SON -AN UNCOMMONLY PROMISING YOUTH OF EIGHTEEN OR NINETEEN YEARS OF AGE.

FATE gave the word, the arrow sped,

And pierc'd my darling's heart;
And with him all the joys are fled
Life can to me impart.

By cruel hands the sapling drops,
In dust dishonour'd laid:

So fell the pride of all my hopes,
My age's future shade.

The mother linnet in the brake
Bewails her ravish'd young;
So 1, for my lost darling's sake,
Lament the live-day long.

Death! oft I've feared thy fatal blow,

Now, fond I bare my breast;

Oh, do thou kindly lay me low

With him I love, at rest!

LINES WRITTEN IN FRIARS' CARSE HERMITAGE, NITHSIDE.

THOU whom chance may hither lead,

Be thou clad in russet weed,

Be thou deckt in silken stole,

Grave these counsels on thy soul.

Life is but a day at most,

Sprung from night, in darkness lost;

Hope not sunshine every hour,

Fear not clouds will always lower.

As youth and love with sprightly dance,
Beneath thy morning star advance,
Pleasure with her siren air

May delude the thoughtless pair;
Let Prudence bless Enjoyment's cup,
Then raptured sip, and sip it up.

As thy day grows warm and high,
Life's meridian flaming nigh,

Dost thou spurn the humble vale?

Life's proud summits would'st thou scale?
Check thy climbing step, elate,

Evils lurk in felon wait:
Dangers eagle-pinioned, bold,
Soar around each cliffy hold,

While cheerful Peace, with linnet song,
Chants the lowly dells among.

As the shades of ev'ning close,
Beck'ning thee to long repose;
As life itself becomes disease,
Seek the chimney-nook of ease;
There ruminate with sober thought,

On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought,

And teach the sportive younkers round,

Saws of experience, sage and sound.

Say, man's true, genuine estimate,
The grand criterion of his fate,
Is not-Art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow?

Did many talents gild thy span ?
Or frugal Nature grudge thee one?
Tell them, and press it on their mind,
As thou thyself must shortly find,
The smile or frown of awful Heav'n
To virtue or to vice is given.
Say, to be just, and kind, and wise,
There solid self-enjoyment lies;
That foolish, selfish, faithless ways
Lead to be wretched, vile, and base.

Thus resigned and quiet, creep
To the bed of lasting sleep;

Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake,
Night, where dawn shall never break,
Till future life, future no more,
To light and joy the good restore,
To light and joy unknown before.
Stranger, go! Heav'n be thy guide!
Quod the Bedesman of Nithside!

ELEGY ON THE YEAR 1788.

FOR Lords or Kings I dinna mourn,
E'en let them die-for that they're born:
But oh! prodigious to reflec'!
A towmont, sirs, is gane to wreck !
Oh Eighty-eight, in thy sma' space
What dire events ha'e taken place!
Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us!
In what a pickle thou hast left us!
The Spanish empire's tint a head,
And my auld teethless Bawtie's dead;
The tulzie's sair 'tween Pitt and Fox,
And our guidwife's wee birdie cocks;
Ye ministers, come mount the pu'pit,
And cry till ye be hearse and roopit,
For Eighty-eight he wished you weel,
And gied ye a' baith gear and meal;
E'en mony a plack, and mony a peck,
Ye ken yoursels, for little feck!...
Observe the very nowte and sheep,
How dowf and dowie now they creep:
Nay, even the yirth itsel' does cry,
For Embro' wells are grutten dry.
Oh Eighty-nine, thou's but a bairn,
And no owre auld, I hope, to learn!
Thou beardless boy, I pray tak care,
Thou now has got thy daddy's chair,
Nae hand-cuffed, muzzled, hap-shackled
But, like himsel', a full free agent.
Be sure ye follow out the plan

Nae waur than he did, honest man!

As muckle better as you can.

A SKETCH.

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A LITTLE, upright, pert, tart, tripping wight,
And still his precious self his dear delight;
Who loves his own smart shadow in the streets,
Better than e'er the fairest she he meets.
A man of fashion too, he made his tour,
Learned vive la bagatelle, et vive l'amour;
So travelled-monkeys their grimace improve,
Polish their grin, nay, sigh for ladie's love.
Much specious lore, but little understood;
Veneering oft outshines the solid wood:
His solid sense-by inches you must tell,
But mete his cunning by the old Scotch ell
His meddling vanity, a busy fiend,

Still making work his selfish craft must mend.

no worse much

EXTEMPORE TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL,

ON RETURNING A NEWSPAPER.

ELLISLAND, Monday Evening.

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,

No murders AT ALL worth the naming.

Our friends, the reviewers, those chippers and hewers,
Are judges of mortar and stone, sir;

But of meet or unmeet, in a fabric complete,

I'll boldly pronounce they are none, sir.

My goose-quill too rude is to tell all your goodness
Bestowed on your servant the poet;

Would I ONLY had one, like a beam of the sun,
And then all the world, sir, should know it!

ODE,

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS OSWALD.

DWELLER in yon dungeon dark,

Hangman of creation, mark!
Who in widow weeds appears,
Laden with unhonoured years,
Noosing with care a bursting purse,
Baited with many a deadly curse!

STROPHE.

View the withered beldam's face-
Can thy keen inspection trace

Aught of Humanity's sweet melting grace?

Note that eye, 'tis rheum o'erflows,

Pity's flood there never rose.

See these hands, ne'er stretched to save,

Hands that took-but never gave.

Keeper of Mammon's iron chest,

Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest.

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And are they of no more avail,

Ten thousand glittering pounds a year?
In other words, can Mammon fail,
Omnipotent as he is here?

O bitter mockery of the pompous bier,
While down the wretched vital part is driv'n!
The cave-lodged beggar, with a conscience clear,
Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to heav'n.

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