The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. / With a New Life of the Poet, and Notices, Critical and Biographical by Allan Cunningham

by Robert Burns; Allan Cunningham

I.

First when Maggy was my care,
Heaven, I thought, was in her air;
Now we’re married—spier nae mair—
Whistle o’er the lave o’t.—
Meg was meek, and Meg was mild,
Bonnie Meg was nature’s child;
Wiser men than me’s beguil’d—
Whistle o’er the lave o’t.

II.

How we live, my Meg and me,
How we love, and how we ‘gree,
I care na by how few may see;
Whistle o’er the lave o’t.—
Wha I wish were maggot’s meat,
Dish’d up in her winding sheet,
I could write—but Meg maun see’t—
Whistle o’er the lave o’t.

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LXXVII.

O WERE I ON PARNASSUS HILL.

Tune—“My love is lost to me.”

[The poet welcomed with this exquisite song his wife to Nithsdale: the air is one of Oswald’s.]

I.