I am wearin’ awa’
To the Land o’ the Leal.
“And there I would be fain
In the Land o’ the Leal.”
No wonder he said it, poor creeter!
I spoze the gay world apoligized for its neglect and coldness by sayin’ that Burns drinked and cut up.
Wall, I spoze he did—some; but he wuz a good-hearted creeter.
And anyway they overlooked it in the first place, and ’em who worship his memory now look calmly over them faults as if they were mere specks on a blazin’ sun.
Why didn’t they do so then? Why didn’t they take a few of the posies they scatter on his cold tomb to-day (one hundred years too late) and lay ’em in the tired, hard-workin’ hands, toilin’ on at Nithsdale?
Why didn’t they take a few bits from the banquets they spread now to his memory (one hundred years too late) and give it to the half-starvin’ poet and his wife and little ones, while it would have done some good?