‘Auld Vandal! ye but show your little mense, Just much about it wi’ your scanty sense; Will your poor narrow foot-path of a street, Where twa wheel-barrows tremble when they meet, Your ruin’d formless bulk o’ stane and lime, Compare wi’ bonnie brigs o’ modern time? There’s men o’ taste wou’d tak the Ducat stream, Tho’ they should cast the very sark and swim, Ere they would grate their feelings wi’ the view O’ sic an ugly Gothic hulk as you.’ AULD BRIG ‘Conceited gowk! puff’d up wi’ windy pride! This mony a year I’ve stood the flood an’ tide; And tho’ wi’ crazy eild I’m sair forfairn, I’ll be a brig, when ye’re a shapeless cairn! As yet ye little ken about the matter, But twa-three winters will inform ye better. When heavy, dark, continued, a’-day rains, Wi’ deepening deluges o’erflow the plains; When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, Or stately Lugar’s mossy fountains boil, Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source, Arous’d by blust’ring winds an’ spotting thowes, In mony a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes; While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate, Sweeps dams, an’ mills, an’ brigs, a’ to the gate; And from Glenbuck, down to the Ratton-key, Auld Ayr is just one lengthen’d, tumbling sea; Then down ye’ll hurl, deil nor ye never rise! And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies! A lesson sadly teaching, to your cost, That architecture’s noble art is lost!’ NEW BRIG ‘Fine architecture, trowth, I needs must say’t o’t, The Lord be thankit that we’ve tint the gate o’t! Gaunt, ghastly, ghaist-alluring edifices, Hanging with threat’ning jut, like precipices; O’er-arching, mouldy, gloom-inspiring coves, Supporting roofs, fantastic, stony groves; Windows and doors in nameless sculptures drest, With order, symmetry, or taste unblest; Forms like some bedlam Statuary’s dream, The craz’d creations of misguided whim; Forms might be worshipp’d on the bended knee, And still the second dread command be free, Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea! Mansions that would disgrace the building taste Of any mason reptile, bird, or beast; Fit only for a doited monkish race, Or frosty maids forsworn the dear embrace, Or cuifs of later times wha held the notion That sullen gloom was sterling, true devotion; Fancies that our guid Brugh denies protection, And soon may they expire, unblest with resurrection!’ AULD BRIG