If you rattle along like your mistress's tongue, Your speed will outrival the dart: But, a fly for your load, you'll break down on the road If your stuff has the rot, like her heart.
When Nature her great master-piece designed, And fram'd her last, best work, the human mind, Her eye intent on all the mazy plan, She form'd of various parts the various man. ...
Old Winter, with his frosty beard, Thus once to Jove his prayer preferr'd, What have I done of all the year, To bear this hated doom severe? My cheerless suns no pleasure know;...
The wind blew hollow frae the hills, By fits the sun's departing beam Look'd on the fading yellow woods That wav'd o'er Lugar's winding stream: Beneath a craggy steep, a bard,...
Now Nature hangs her mantle green On every blooming tree, And spreads her sheets o' daisies white Out o'er the grassy lea: Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams,...
Auld comrade dear, and brither sinner, How's a' the folk about Glenconner? How do you this blae eastlin wind, That's like to blaw a body blind? For me, my faculties are frozen,...
This wot ye all whom it concerns, I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns, October twenty-third, A ne'er-to-be-forgotten day, Sae far I sprachled up the brae, I dinner'd wi' a Lord. ...
Here Stuarts once in glory reign'd, And laws for Scotland's weal ordain'd; But now unroof'd their palace stands, Their sceptre's sway'd by other hands; The injured Stuart line is gone,...
Thou, who thy honour as thy God rever'st, Who, save thy mind's reproach, nought earthly fear'st, To thee this votive offering I impart, The tearful tribute of a broken heart....
Wae worth thy power, thou cursed leaf, Fell source o' a' my woe an' grief; For lack o' thee I've lost my lass, For lack o' thee I scrimp my glass. I see the children of affliction...
Ye men of wit and wealth, why all this sneering 'Gainst poor Excisemen? give the cause a hearing; What are you, landlords' rent-rolls? teasing ledgers: What premiers, what? even monarchs' mighty gaugers:...
The greybeard, old Wisdom, may boast of his treasures, Give me with gay Folly to live; I grant him his calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures, But Folly has raptures to give.