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| IN this strange land, this uncouth clime, | |
| A land unknown to prose or rhyme; | |
| Where words ne’er cross’t the Muse’s heckles, | |
| Nor limpit in poetic shackles: | |
| A land that Prose did never view it, | 5 |
| Except when drunk he stacher’t thro’ it; | |
| Here, ambush’d by the chimla cheek, | |
| Hid in an atmosphere of reek, | |
| I hear a wheel thrum i’ the neuk, | |
| I hear it—for in vain I leuk. | 10 |
| The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel, | |
| Enhuskèd by a fog infernal: | |
| Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures, | |
| I sit and count my sins by chapters; | |
| For life and spunk like ither Christians, | 15 |
| I’m dwindled down to mere existence, | |
| Wi’ nae converse but Gallowa’ bodies, | |
| Wi’ nae kenn’d face but Jenny Geddes, | |
| Jenny, my Pegasean pride! | |
| Dowie she saunters down Nithside, | 20 |
| And aye a westlin leuk she throws, | |
| While tears hap o’er her auld brown nose! | |
| Was it for this, wi’ cannie care, | |
| Thou bure the Bard through many a shire? | |
| At howes, or hillocks never stumbled, | 25 |
| And late or early never grumbled?— | |
| O had I power like inclination, | |
| I’d heeze thee up a constellation, | |
| To canter with the Sagitarre, | |
| Or loup the ecliptic like a bar; | 30 |
| Or turn the pole like any arrow; | |
| Or, when auld Phoebus bids good-morrow, | |
| Down the zodiac urge the race, | |
| And cast dirt on his godship’s face; | |
| For I could lay my bread and kail | 35 |
| He’d ne’er cast saut upo’ thy tail.— | |
| Wi’ a’ this care and a’ this grief, | |
| And sma’, sma’ prospect of relief, | |
| And nought but peat reek i’ my head, | |
| How can I write what ye can read?— | 40 |
| Tarbolton, twenty-fourth o’ June, | |
| Ye’ll find me in a better tune; | |
| But till we meet and weet our whistle, | |
Tak this excuse for nae epistle.
ROBERT BURNS. | |
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