Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west,
The drift is driving sairly;
Sae loud and shrill’s I hear the blast,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.
The birds sit chittering in the thorn,
A’ day they fare but sparely;
And lang’s the night frae e’en to morn,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly.
One surmises Up in the Morning Early belongs to “that great body of treasurable songs with which Burns has dowered his countrymen.” On the face of it, to find sorrier stuff one would have to visit an English music hall. There is not a glimmer of poetry in any one of the twelve lines, and the composition as a whole might have been written by a precocious infant in a Glasgow Board School. After this precious production we are regaled with the appended touching piece of sentimentalism:
Tho’ cruel fate should bid us part,