Impromptu On Carron Iron Works
We cam na here to view your warks, In hopes to be mair wise, But only, lest we gang to hell, It may be nae surprise: But when we tirl’d at your door Your porter dought na hear us; Sae may, shou’d we to Hell’s yetts come, Your billy Satan sair us!
To Miss Ferrier
Enclosing the Elegy on Sir J. H. Blair. Nae heathen name shall I prefix, Frae Pindus or Parnassus; Auld Reekie dings them a’ to sticks, For rhyme-inspiring lasses. Jove’s tunefu’ dochters three times three Made Homer deep their debtor; But, gien the body half an e’e, Nine Ferriers wad done better! Last day my mind was in a bog, Down George’s Street I stoited; A creeping cauld prosaic fog My very sense doited. Do what I dought to set her free, My saul lay in the mire; Ye turned a neuk—I saw your e’e— She took the wing like fire! The mournfu’ sang I here enclose, In gratitude I send you, And pray, in rhyme as weel as prose, A’ gude things may attend you!
Written By Somebody On The Window
Of an Inn at Stirling, on seeing the Royal Palace in ruin.
Here Stuarts once in glory reigned, And laws for Scotland’s weal ordained; But now unroof’d their palace stands, Their sceptre’s sway’d by other hands; Fallen indeed, and to the earth Whence groveling reptiles take their birth. The injured Stuart line is gone, A race outlandish fills their throne; An idiot race, to honour lost; Who know them best despise them most.