Maks hours like minutes, hand in hand,
Dance by fu' light.

The magic wand then let us wield;
For, ance that five-and-forty's speel'd,
See, crazy, weary, joyless eild,

Wi' wrinkled face,

climbed

age

Comes hostin', hirplin' owre the coughing-limping

field,

Wi' creepin' pace.

When ance life's day draws near the

gloamin',

Then fareweel vacant careless roamin';
And fareweel cheerfu' tankards foamin',
And social noise;

And fareweel dear, deluding woman,

The joy of joys!

Oh, Life! how pleasant in thy morning,
Young Fancy's rays the hills adorning!
Cold-pausing Caution's lesson scorning,
We frisk away,

twilight

Like school-boys, at the expected warning,
To joy and play.

We wander there, we wander here,
We eye the rose upon the brier,
Unmindful that the thorn is near,
Among the leaves:

And though the puny wound appear,

Short while it grieves.

Some, lucky, find a flowery spot,
For which they never toiled or swat;
They drink the sweet and eat the fat,

But care or pain;

And, haply, eye the barren hut
With high disdain.

Without

With steady aim some fortune chase;
Keen hope does every sinew brace;
Through fair, through foul, they urge the race,
And seize the prey:

Then cannie, in some cozie place,

They close the day.

quietly

And others, like your humble servan',
Poor wights! nae rules nor roads observin',
To right or left, eternal swervin',

They zigzag on;

Till curst with age, obscure and starvin',
They aften groan.

Alas! what bitter toil and straining-
But truce with peevish, poor complaining!
Is Fortune's fickle Luna waning?

E'en let her gang!

Beneath what light she has remaining,
Let's sing our sang.

My pen I here fling to the door,

And kneel, "Ye Powers," and warm implore, "Though I should wander Terra o'er,

In all her climes,

Grant me but this, I ask no more,

Aye rowth o' rhymes.

"Gie dreeping roasts to country lairds,
Till icicles hing frae their beards;
Gie fine braw claes to fine life-guards,
And maids of honour;

And yill and whisky gie to cairds,
Until they sconner.

"A title, Dempster 1 merits it; A garter gie to Willie Pitt;

Gie wealth to some be-ledgered cit,

In cent. per cent.;

But give me real, sterling wit,

And I'm content.

ale

abundance

are nauseated

'While ye are pleased to keep me hale,
I'll sit down o'er my scanty meal,
Be't water-brose, or muslin-kail,2

oatmeal-gruel

1 George Dempster of Dunnichen, then a conspicuous orator in parliament, and a friend to all patriotic institutions in His native land. He commenced his parliamentary career in 1762, closed it in 1790, and died in 1818 at the age of eighty

two.

2 Broth made without meat.

Wi' cheerfu' face,

As lang's the Muses dinna fail
To say the grace."

An anxious e'e I never throws
Behint my lug or by my nose;
I jouk beneath Misfortune's blows
As weel's I may;

Sworn foe to Sorrow, Care, and Prose,
I rhyme away.

ear

stoop

serious

Oh ye douce folk, that live by rule,
Grave, tideless-blooded, calm and cool,
Compared wi' you - oh fool! fool! fool!
How much unlike;

Your hearts are just a standing-pool,

Your lives a dike!

Nae hairbrained, sentimental traces,
In your unlettered nameless faces!

In arioso trills and graces

Ye never stray,

But gravissimo, solemn basses

Ye hum away.

Ye are sae grave, nae doubt ye're wise;

Nae ferly though ye do despise

The hairum-scairum, ram-stam boys,

The rattling squad:

wall

wonder

heedless

I see you upward cast your eyes

Ye ken the road.

Whilst I- but I shall haud me there -
Wi' you I'll scarce gang ony where:
Then, Jamie, I shall say nae mair,
But quat my sang,

Content with you to mak a pair,
Whare'er I gang.

THE VISION.

There was at this time a contention going on in Burns's mind between the sad consideration of his position in life and those poetical tendencies which might be interpreted as partly the cause of that position being so low. This contention we see traced in the several epistles he had written to his brother poets, Sillar, Lapraik, and Simpson, and to his friend Smith, during the course of the present year of flowing inspiration. It might have been easy for any of these individuals to see, that if Burns only could be a successful man of the world by an utter abandonment of the Muse, he never could be so at all, for he invariably ends by taking his rhyming power as a quittance of fortune. At length we have the final struggle be tween these two contending principles, and the tri