POETICAL WORKS OF

ROBERT BURNS

EDITED

FROM THE BEST PRINTED AND MANUSCRIPT AUTHORITIES, WITH
GLOSSARIAL INDEX AND A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR

POEMS.

LETTER TO JOHN GOUDIE,
KILMARNOCK,

ON THE PUBLICATION OF HIS ESSAYS.

O GOUDIE! terror o' the Whigs,
Dread o' black coats and rev'rend wigs,

Sour Bigotry, on her last legs,

Girnin' looks back,

Wishin' the ten Egyptian plagues

Wad seize you quick.

Poor gapin' glowrin' Superstition,
Waes me! she's in a sad condition;
Fy, bring Black-Jock, her state physician,
To see her water;

Alas! there's ground o' great suspicion
She'll ne'er get better.

Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple,
But now she's got an unco' ripple ;
Haste, gie her name up i' the chapel,
Nigh unto death;

See how she fetches at the thrapple,
An' gasps for breath.

B

Enthusiasm's past redemption,
Gaen in a galloping consumption,

Not a' the quacks, with a' their gumption,
Will ever mend her,

Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption, Death soon will end her.

'Tis you and Taylor are the chief,
Wha are to blame for this mischief;
But gin the Lord's ain focks gat leave,
A toom tar-barrel

An' twa red peats wad send relief,

An' end the quarrel.

LETTER TO JAMES TAIT,
GLENCONNOR.

AULD Comrade dear and brither sinner,
How's a' the folk about Glenconnor;
How do you this blae eastlin wind,
That's like to blaw a body blind?
For me, my faculties are frozen,
My dearest member nearly dozen'd.
I've sent you here by Johnie Simson,
Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on ;
Smith, wi' his sympathetic feeling,
An' Reid, to common sense appealing.
Philosophers have fought an' wrangled,
An' meikle Greek an' Latin mangled,
Till wi' their logic-jargon tir'd,
An' in the depth of Science mir'd,