A towmond o' trouble, should that be my fa', A night o' gude fellowship sowthers it a'; When at the blythe end o' our journey at last, Wha the deil ever thinks o' the road he has past? Blind Chance, let her snapper and stoyte on her way; Be't to me, be't frae me, e'en let the jade gae: Come Ease, or come Travail, come Pleasure or Pain, My warst word is--Welcome, and welcome again. This song gives Burns's idea of himself, and of his struggle with the world, when he could look on both from the placid, rather than the despondent side. He regarded it as a true picture of himself; for, when a good miniature of him had been done, he wrote to Thomson that he wished a vignette from it to be prefixed to this song, that, in his own words, "the portrait of my face, and the picture of my mind may go down the stream of time together." Burns had more moods of mind than most men, and this was, we may hope, no unfrequent one with him. But if we would reach the truth, we probably ought to strike a balance (p. 167) between the spirit of this song and the dark moods depicted in some of those letters already quoted. The other song of the same time is the well-known _A Man's a Man for a' that_. This powerful song speaks out in his best style a sentiment that through all his life had been dear to the heart of Burns. It has been quoted, they say, by Beranger in France, and by Goethe in Germany, and is the word which springs up in the mind of all foreigners when they think of Burns. It was inspired, no doubt, by his keen sense of social oppression, quickened to white heat by influences that had lately come from France, and by what he had suffered for his sympathy with that cause. It has since become the watchword of all who fancy that they have secured less, and others more, of this world's goods, than their respective merit deserves. Stronger words he never wrote. The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that. That is a word for all time. Yet perhaps it might have been wished that so noble a song had not been marred by any touch of social bitterness. A lord, no doubt, may be a "birkie" and a "coof," but may not a ploughman be so too? This great song Burns wrote on the first day of 1795.