English

April 21st, 1785.
While new-ca'd kye rowte at the stake,
An' pownies reek in pleugh or braik,
This hour on e'enin's edge I take,
To own I'm debtor,
To honest-hearted, auld L*****k,
For his kind letter.

Forjesket sair, with weary legs,
Rattlin the corn out-owre the rigs,
Or dealing thro' amang the naigs
Their ten-hours bite,
My awkart Muse sair pleads and begs,
I would na write.

The tapetless, ramfeezl'd hizzie,

Candid and generous and just,
Boys care but little whom they trust,
An error soon corrected —
For who but learns in riper years,
That man, when smoothest he appears,
Is most to be suspected?

Who seeks a friend, should come dispos'd
T'exhibit in full bloom disclos'd
The graces and the beauties
That form the character he seeks,
For 'tis an union that bespeaks
Reciprocated duties.

A man renown'd for repartee
Will seldom scruple to make free
With friendship's finest feeling,

" Our public hives of puerile resort"

Would you your son should be a sot or dunce,
Lascivious, headstrong; or all these at once;
That, in good time, the stripling's finished taste
For loose expense and fashionable waste
Should prove your ruin and his own at last,
Train him in public with a mob of boys,
Childish in mischief only and in noise,
Else of a mannish growth, and five in ten
In infidelity and lewdness men.
There shall he learn, ere sixteen winters old,

Bred at the Public Schools

To you, then, tenants of life's middle state,
Securely placed between the small and great,
Whose character, yet undebauched, retains
Two-thirds of all the virtue that remains,
Who wise yourselves, desire your sons should learn
Your wisdom and your ways — to you I turn.
Look round you on a world perversely blind;
See what contempt is fall'n on human kind;
See wealth abused, and dignities misplaced,
Great titles, offices, and trusts disgraced,

Mounting the church-ladder

The father, who designs his babe a priest,
Dreams him episcopally such at least;
And, while the playful jockey scours the room
Briskly, astride upon the parlour broom,
In fancy sees him more superbly ride
In coach with purple lined, and mitres on its side.
Events improbable and strange as these,
Which only a parental eye foresees,
A public school shall bring to pass with ease.
But how! resides such virtue in that air
As must create an appetite for pray'r?

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And, as the mind is pitch'd, the ear is pleas'd
With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where mem'ry slept. Wherever I have heard

'Tis morning; and the sun with ruddy orb
Ascending fires the horizon. While the clouds
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity and sage remark

'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark

Just when our drawing-rooms begin to blaze
With lights by clear reflection multiplied
From many a mirror (in which he of Gath,
Goliath, might have seen his giant bulk
Whole without stooping, tow'ring crest and all),
My pleasures too begin. But me perhaps
The glowing hearth may satisfy awhile
With faint illumination that uplifts
The shadow to the ceiling, there by fits
Dancing uncouthly to the quiv'ring flame.
Not undelightful is an hour to me
So spent in parlour twilight; such a gloom

Hark! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright; —
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumb'ring at his back.
True to his charge, the close-pack'd load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destin'd inn:
And, having dropp'd th' expected bag, pass on.