| |
| O YE wha are sae guid yoursel’, | |
| Sae pious and sae holy, | |
| Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell | |
| Your neibours’ fauts and folly! | |
| Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, | 5 |
| Supplied wi’ store o’ water; | |
| The heaped happer’s ebbing still, | |
| An’ still the clap plays clatter. | |
| |
| Hear me, ye venerable core, | |
| As counsel for poor mortals | 10 |
| That frequent pass douce Wisdom’s door | |
| For glaikit Folly’s portals: | |
| I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes, | |
| Would here propone defences— | |
| Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, | 15 |
| Their failings and mischances. | |
| |
| Ye see your state wi’ theirs compared, | |
| And shudder at the niffer; | |
| But cast a moment’s fair regard, | |
| What maks the mighty differ; | 20 |
| Discount what scant occasion gave, | |
| That purity ye pride in; | |
| And (what’s aft mair than a’ the lave), | |
| Your better art o’ hidin. | |
| |
| Think, when your castigated pulse | 25 |
| Gies now and then a wallop! | |
| What ragings must his veins convulse, | |
| That still eternal gallop! | |
| Wi’ wind and tide fair i’ your tail, | |
| Right on ye scud your sea-way; | 30 |
| But in the teeth o’ baith to sail, | |
| It maks a unco lee-way. | |
| |
| See Social Life and Glee sit down, | |
| All joyous and unthinking, | |
| Till, quite transmugrified, they’re grown | 35 |
| Debauchery and Drinking: | |
| O would they stay to calculate | |
| Th’ eternal consequences; | |
| Or your more dreaded hell to state, | |
| Damnation of expenses! | 40 |
| |
| Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames, | |
| Tied up in godly laces, | |
| Before ye gie poor Frailty names, | |
| Suppose a change o’ cases; | |
| A dear-lov’d lad, convenience snug, | 45 |
| A treach’rous inclination— | |
| But let me whisper i’ your lug, | |
| Ye’re aiblins nae temptation. | |
| |
| Then gently scan your brother man, | |
| Still gentler sister woman; | 50 |
| Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang, | |
| To step aside is human: | |
| One point must still be greatly dark,— | |
| The moving Why they do it; | |
| And just as lamely can ye mark, | 55 |
| How far perhaps they rue it. | |
| |
| Who made the heart, ’tis He alone | |
| Decidedly can try us; | |
| He knows each chord, its various tone, | |
| Each spring, its various bias: | 60 |
| Then at the balance let’s be mute, | |
| We never can adjust it; | |
| What’s done we partly may compute, | |
| But know not what’s resisted. | |
| |
