Alas! what bitter toil an’ straining— But truce with peevish, poor complaining! Is fortune’s fickle Luna waning? E’n let her gang! Beneath what light she has remaining, Let’s sing our sang. My pen I here fling to the door, And kneel, ye Pow’rs! and warm implore, “Tho’ I should wander Terra o’er, In all her climes, Grant me but this, I ask no more, Aye rowth o’ rhymes. “Gie dreepin roasts to countra lairds, Till icicles hing frae their beards; Gie fine braw claes to fine life-guards, And maids of honour; An’ yill an’ whisky gie to cairds, Until they sconner. “A title, Dempster^1 merits it; A garter gie to Willie Pitt; Gie wealth to some be-ledger’d cit, In cent. per cent.; But give me real, sterling wit, And I’m content. [Footnote 1: George Dempster of Dunnichen, M.P.] “While ye are pleas’d to keep me hale, I’ll sit down o’er my scanty meal, Be’t water-brose or muslin-kail, Wi’ cheerfu’ face, As lang’s the Muses dinna fail To say the grace.” An anxious e’e I never throws Behint my lug, or by my nose; I jouk beneath Misfortune’s blows As weel’s I may; Sworn foe to sorrow, care, and prose, I rhyme away. O ye douce folk that live by rule, Grave, tideless-blooded, calm an’cool, Compar’d wi’ you—O fool! fool! fool! How much unlike! Your hearts are just a standing pool, Your lives, a dyke! Nae hair-brain’d, sentimental traces In your unletter’d, nameless faces! In arioso trills and graces Ye never stray; But gravissimo, solemn basses Ye hum away. Ye are sae grave, nae doubt ye’re wise; Nae ferly tho’ ye do despise The hairum-scairum, ram-stam boys, The rattling squad: I see ye upward cast your eyes— Ye ken the road! Whilst I—but I shall haud me there, Wi’ you I’ll scarce gang ony where— Then, Jamie, I shall say nae mair, But quat my sang, Content wi’ you to mak a pair. Whare’er I gang. The Vision Duan First^1 The sun had clos’d the winter day, The curless quat their roarin play, And hunger’d maukin taen her way, To kail-yards green, While faithless snaws ilk step betray Whare she has been. The thresher’s weary flingin-tree, The lee-lang day had tired me; And when the day had clos’d his e’e, Far i’ the west, Ben i’ the spence, right pensivelie, I gaed to rest. There, lanely by the ingle-cheek, I sat and ey’d the spewing reek, That fill’d, wi’ hoast-provoking smeek, The auld clay biggin; An’ heard the restless rattons squeak About the riggin.