With your honours, as with a certain king,
In your servants this is striking,
The more incapacity they bring,
The more they're to your liking.
Epistle To Colonel De Peyster
My honor'd Colonel, deep I feel
Your interest in the Poet's weal;
Ah! now sma' heart hae I to speel
The steep Parnassus,
Surrounded thus by bolus pill,
And potion glasses.
O what a canty world were it,
Would pain and care and sickness spare it;
And Fortune favour worth and merit
As they deserve;
And aye rowth o' roast-beef and claret,
Syne, wha wad starve?
Dame Life, tho' fiction out may trick her,
And in paste gems and frippery deck her;
Oh! flickering, feeble, and unsicker
I've found her still,
Aye wavering like the willow-wicker,
'Tween good and ill.
Then that curst carmagnole, auld Satan,
Watches like baudrons by a ratton
Our sinfu' saul to get a claut on,
Wi'felon ire;
Syne, whip! his tail ye'll ne'er cast saut on,
He's aff like fire.
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