A hundred years! and Nature’s powers
No greater grown nor lessened!
They saw no flowers more sweet than ours,
No fairer new moon’s crescent.
Would she but treat us poets so,
So from our winter free us,
And set our slow old sap aflow
To sprout in fresh ideas!
III.
Alas, think I, what worth or parts
Have brought me here competing,
To speak what starts in myriad hearts
With Burns’s memory beating!
Himself had loved a theme like this;
Must I be its entomber?
No pen save his but’s sure to miss
Its pathos or its humor.
IV.
As I sat musing what to say,
And how my verse to number,
Some elf in play passed by that way,
And sank my lids in slumber;
And on my sleep a vision stole,
Which I will put in metre,
Of Burns’s soul at the wicket-hole
Where sits the good Saint Peter.
V.
The saint, methought, had left his post
That day to Holy Willie,
Who swore, “Each ghost that comes shall toast
In brunstane, will he, nill he;
There’s nane need hope with phrases fine
Their score to wipe a sin frae;
I’ll chalk a sign, to save their tryin',—
A hand (☟) and 'Vide infra!'”
VI.
Alas! no soil’s too cold or dry
For spiritual small potatoes,
Scrimped natures, spry the trade to ply
Of diaboli advocatus;
Who lay bent pins in the penance-stool
Where Mercy plumps a cushion,
Who’ve just one rule for knave and fool,
It saves so much confusion!