Where, where is Love’s fond, tender throe, With lordly Honour’s lofty brow, The pow’rs you proudly own? Is there, beneath Love’s noble name, Can harbour, dark, the selfish aim To bless himself alone? Mark maiden-innocence a prey To love-pretending snares; This boasted honour turns away, Shunning soft pity’s rising sway, Regardless of the tears, and unavailing pray’rs! Perhaps this hour, in mis’ry’s squalid nest, She strains your infant to her joyless breast, And with a mother’s fears shrinks at the rocking blast! Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down, Feel not a want but what yourselves create, Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate, Whom friends and fortune quite disown! Ill satisfied keen nature’s clam’rous call, Stretch’d on his straw he lays himself to sleep, While thro’ the ragged roof and chinky wall, Chill o’er his slumbers piles the drifty heap! Think on the dungeon’s grim confine, Where guilt and poor misfortune pine! Guilt, erring man, relenting view! But shall thy legal rage pursue The wretch, already crushèd low, By cruel fortune’s undeservèd blow? Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!’ I heard nae mair; for Chanticleer Shook off the pouthery snaw, And hail’d the morning with a cheer, A cottage-rousing craw. But deep this truth impress’d my mind— Thro’ all His works abroad, The heart benevolent and kind The most resembles God. [Illustration: When biting Boreas, fell and dour, Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r.] THE RICHES OF THE POOR (TO DAVIE, A BROTHER POET) While winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw, And bar the doors wi’ driving snaw, And hing us owre the ingle, I set me down, to pass the time, And spin a verse or twa o’ rhyme, In hamely westlin jingle. While frosty winds blaw in the drift, Ben to the chimla lug, I grudge a wee the great-folk’s gift, That live sae bien an’ snug; I tent less, and want less Their roomy fire-side; But hanker and canker To see their cursèd pride. It’s hardly in a body’s pow’r, To keep, at times, frae being sour, To see how things are shar’d; How best o’ chiels are whyles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, And ken na how to wair’t: But, Davie, lad, ne’er fash your head, Tho’ we hae little gear, We’re fit to win our daily bread, As lang’s we’re hale and fier: ‘Mair spier na, nor fear na,’ Auld age ne’er mind a feg; The last o’t, the warst o’t, Is only but to beg.