Heaven spare you lang to kiss the breath O' mony flow'ry simmers !

Ο

And bless your bonie lasses baith,

I'm tald they're loosome kimmers !

And God bless young Dunaskin's laird, The blossom of our gentry!

And may he wear an auld man's beard, A credit to his country.

To CAPTAIN RIDDEL, GLENRIDDER.

(EXTEMPORE LINES ON RETURNING A NEWSPAPER.)

Ellisland, Monday Evening.

YOUR news and review, Sir, I've read through

and through, Sir,

With little admiring or blaming:

The

1

papers are barren of home-news or foreign, No murders or rapes worth the naming.

Our friends the reviewers, those chippers and hewers,

Are judges of mortar and stone, Sir;
But of meet, or unmeet, in a fabrick complete,
I'll boldly pronounce they are none, Sir.

My goose-quill too rude is to tell all your good

ness

Bestowed on your servant, the Poet;

Would to God I had one like a beam of the sun,

And then all the world, Sir, should know it!

To

To TERRAUGHTY,* ON HIS BIRTH-DAY.

HEALTH to the Maxwells' vet'ran Chief!
Health, ay unsour'd by care or grief:

Inspir'd, I turn'd Fate's sybil leaf,

This natal morn,

I see thy life is stuff o' prief,

Scarce quite half worn.

This day thou metes threescore eleven, And I can tell that bounteous Heaven (The second sight, ye ken, is given

To ilka POET)

On thee a tack o' seven times seven

Will yet bestow it.

If envious buckies view wi' sorrow

Thy lengthen'd days on this blest morrow,
May desolation's lang-teeth'd harrow,

Nine miles an hour,

Rake them, like Sodom and Gomorrah,

In brunstane stoure

* Mr. Maxwell, of Terraughty, near Dumfries.

But

But for thy friends, and they are mony,
Baith honest men and lasses bonie,
May couthie fortune, kind and cannie,
In social glee,

Wi' mornings blythe and e'enings funny

Bless them and thee!

Fareweel, auld birkie! Lord be near ye,
And then the Deil he daur na steer ye:
Your friends ay love, your

If neist

faes ay fear ye, For me, shame fa' me,

my heart I dinna wear ye

While BURNS they ca' me.

E E

To

To A LADY,

WITH A PRESENT OF A PAIR OF DRINKING GLASSES.

FAIR

AIR Empress of the Poet's soul,

And Queen of Poetesses;

Clarinda, take this little boon,

This humble pair of glasses.

And fill them high with generous juice,
As generous as your
mind;

And pledge me in the generous toast-
"The whole of human kind!"

"To those who love us!"-second fill;
But not to those whom we love;

Lest we love those who love not us!-
A third-" to thee and me, love!"

MISCELLANEOUS