Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/165

This page has been validated.
THE POEMS OF BURNS.
111
The gallant Sir Robert fought hard to the end;But who can with Fate and quart bumpers contend?Though Fate said, a hero should perish in light;So up rose bright Phœbus—and down fell the knight.
Next up rose our bard, like a prophet in drink:—'Craigdarroch, thou'lt soar when creation shall sink!But if thou would flourish immortal in rhyme,Come—one bottle more—and have at the sublime!
'Thy line, that have struggled for freedom with Bruce,Shall heroes and patriots ever produce:So thine be the laurel, and mine be the bay;The field thou hast won, by yon bright god of day!'

SKETCH

INSRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON. C. J. FOX.

How Wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite;How Virtue and Vice blend their black and their white;How Genius, th' illustrious father of fiction,Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction—I sing; If these mortals, the Critics, should bustle,I care not, not I—let the Critics go whistle!
But now for a Patron, whose name and whose glory,At once may illustrate and honour my story.
Thou, first of our orators, first of our wits;Yet whose parts and acquirements seem just lucky hits;With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong,No man, with the half of 'em, e'er went far wrong;With passions so potent, and fancies so bright,No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite right;A sorry, poor, misbegot son of the Muses,For using thy name offers fifty excuses.Good Lord, what is man! for as simple he looks,Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks,With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil,All in all, he's a problem must puzzle the devil.
On his one ruling Passion Sir Pope hugely labours,That, like th' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours:Mankind are his show-box—a friend, would you know him?Pull the string, Ruling Passion, the picture will show him.What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system,One trifling particular, Truth, should have miss'd him!For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,Mankind is a science defies definitions.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.