Epistle to Hugh Parker by Robert Burns — Read

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, / 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. / The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel, / Enhusked 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, / 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, / 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, / 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; / 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 / 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? - / 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.