A Bard’s Epitaph

A Bottle And Friend (song)

A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, Esq.

Address To A Haggis

Address to the Deil

Address to the Toothache

Address to the Unco Guid

A Dream

A Fiddler in the North

Ae Fond Kiss

Ah, woe is me, my Mother dear

A Man’s a Man for a’ that

Anna, thy Charms

A Poet’s Welcome to his Love-Begotten Daughter

A red, red Rose

Auld Lang Syne

Auld Rob Morris

A Winter Night

Bonie Dundee: A Fragment

Bonie Jean: A Ballad

Bonie Peggy Alison

Ca’ the Yowes to the Knowes

Craigieburn Wood

Caledonia: A Ballad

Death and Dr. Hornbook

Despondency: An Ode

Duncan Gray

Epistle on J. Lapraik

Epitaph on Holy Willie

Farewell thou stream that winding flows

Farewell to the Banks of Ayr

Farewell to the Highlands

Green Grow the Rashes

Halloween

Handsome Nell

Highland Mary

Here’s to thy health, my bonie lass

Holy Willie’s Prayer

I do confess thou art sae fair

I dream’d I lay

John Anderson, My Jo

John Barleycorn: A Ballad

Kissing my Katie

Lady Mary Ann

Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots

Lines to an Old Sweetheart

Love in the Guise of Friendship

Lines on the Fall of Fyers

Mary Morison

Montgomerie’s Peggy

My Bonie Mary

My Highland Lassie, O

My Nanie, O!

Now Spring has clad the grove in green

O Tibbie, I hae seen the day

O were my love you lilac fair

O that’s the lassie o’ my heart

Rantin, Rovin Robin

Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn

Scotch Drink

Sweet Afton

Tam o’ Shanter: A Tale

The Auld Farmer’s New-Year-Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare, Maggie

The Banks o’ Doon

The Battle of Sherramuir

The Birks of Aberfeldy

The Bonie Wee Thing

The Holy Fair

The First Six Verses of the Ninetieth Psalm versified

The Lass of Cessnock Banks

The lass that made the bed to me

To a Mouse

To a Louse

To a Mountain Daisy

The Wounded Hare

Tragic Fragment—All villain as I am

Up in the Morning Early

Winter: A Dirge

Yon Wild Mossy Mountains

Robert Burns Poetry And Songs

A Winter Night

“Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?”—SHAKESPEARE.

WHEN biting Boreas, fell and dour,
Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;
When Phoebus gies a short-liv’d glow’r,
Far south the lift,
Dim-dark’ning thro’ the flaky show’r,
Or whirling drift:

Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,
Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked,
While burns, wi’ snawy wreaths up-choked,
Wild-eddying swirl;
Or, thro’ the mining outlet bocked,
Down headlong hurl:

List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle,
I thought me on the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O’ winter war,
And thro’ the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle
Beneath a scar.

Ilk happing bird,—wee, helpless thing!
That, in the merry months o’ spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o’ thee?
Whare wilt thou cow’r thy chittering wing,
An’ close thy e’e?

Ev’n you, on murdering errands toil’d,
Lone from your savage homes exil’d,
The blood-stain’d roost, and sheep-cote spoil’d
My heart forgets,
While pityless the tempest wild
Sore on you beats!

Now Phoebe in her midnight reign,
Dark-muff’d, view’d the dreary plain;
Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train,
Rose in my soul,
Slow, solemn, stole:—

“Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!
And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost!
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!

Not all your rage, as now united, shows
More hard unkindness unrelenting,
Vengeful malice unrepenting.
Than heaven-illumin’d Man on brother Man bestows!

“See stern Oppression’s iron grip,
Or mad Ambition’s gory hand,
Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip,
Woe, Want, and Murder o’er a land!
Ev’n in the peaceful rural vale,
Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale,
How pamper’d Luxury, Flatt’ry by her side,
The parasite empoisoning her ear,
With all the servile wretches in the rear,
Looks o’er proud Property, extended wide;
And eyes the simple, rustic hind,
Whose toil upholds the glitt’ring show—
A creature of another kind,
Some coarser substance, unrefin’d—
Plac’d for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, below!

“Where, where is Love’s fond, tender throe,
With lordly Honour’s lofty brow,
The pow’rs you proudly own?
Is there, beneath Love’s noble name,
Can harbour, dark, the selfish aim,
To bless himself alone?
Mark maiden-innocence a prey
To love-pretending snares:
This boasted Honour turns away,
Shunning soft Pity’s rising sway,
Regardless of the tears and unavailing pray’rs!
Perhaps this hour, in Misery’s squalid nest,
She strains your infant to her joyless breast,
And with a mother’s fears shrinks at the rocking blast!

“Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down,
Feel not a want but what yourselves create,
Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate,
Whom friends and fortune quite disown!
Ill-satisfy’d keen nature’s clamorous call,
Stretch’d on his straw, he lays himself to sleep;
While through the ragged roof and chinky wall,
Chill, o’er his slumbers, piles the drifty heap!
Think on the dungeon’s grim confine,
Where Guilt and poor Misfortune pine!
Guilt, erring man, relenting view,
But shall thy legal rage pursue
The wretch, already crushed low
By cruel Fortune’s undeserved blow?
Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress;
A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!”

I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer
Shook off the pouthery snaw,
And hail’d the morning with a cheer,
A cottage-rousing craw.
But deep this truth impress’d my mind—
Thro’ all His works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.

Robert Burns

 

 

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