He's stamping, and he's jumping!
His lengthened chin and turned up snout,
His frightful squeel and gestures,

Oh! how they fire the heart devout
Like cantharidian plasters,
On such a day.

What signifies his brazen shine
Of moral powers and reason?
His English style and gesture fine
Are surely out of season.
Like Socrates or Antonine
Or some old pagan heathen,
The moral man he does define,
But never a word of faith in-
What's right that day!

But the satire contained in Holy Willie's Prayer aroused the wrath of the "Old Lights" of the Calvinistic Creed of Scotland, echoing along the church walls of Glasgow, Edinburgh and even to the London temples of religion, placing Burns outside of the pale of sacerdotal forgiveness even to this day. He prods the preachers in this fashion:

HOLY WILLIE'S PRAYER.

But I grow mad at their grimaces,
Their sighing, canting, pale-proud faces,
Their three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces,
Their stretching conscience,

Whose greed, revenge and pride disgraces
Worse than their nonsense!

Oh! Pope, had I thy satire's darts

To give the rascals their deserts
I'd rip their rotten, hollow hearts,
And tell aloud-

Their juggling, hocus-pocus arts
To cheat the crowd!

God knows I'm not the thing I should be,
Nor am I even the thing I could be,

But twenty times, I rather would be
An atheist clean

Than under gospel colors hid be
Just for a screen!

In spite of crowds, in spite of mobs,
In spite of undermining jobs,

In spite of dark banditti stabs
At worth and merit,

By scoundrels, even with holy robes,
But hellish spirit!

THE ELDER'S HOLY PRAYER.

Lord, bless thy chosen in this place,
For here thou hast a chosen race;
But God confound their stubborn face,
And blast their name,

Who bring thy Elders to disgrace
And public shame.

Lord, hear my earnest cry and prayer
Against the Presbyterians of Ayr;
Thy strong right hand, Lord, let it bear
Upon their heads:

Lord, weigh it down and do not spare
For their mis-deeds.

Lord, in the day of vengeance try him; Lord, visit them who did employ him, And pass not in thy mercy by them, Nor hear their prayer:

But for thy people's sake destroy them, And do not spare.

But, Lord remember me and mine
With mercies temporal and divine,

That I for gold and grace may shine,
Excelled by none,

And all the glory shall be thine,
Amen! Amen!

The natural resentment of Burns at the unequal distribution of mental and material favors by Providence is shown in the following verses from the poem—

MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN.

Many and sharp the numerous ills
Inwoven with our frame,

More pointed still we make ourselves,
Regret, remorse and shame,

And man whose heaven-erected face
The smiles of love adorn,

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless millions mourn!

If I'm designed yon Lordling's slave-
By Nature's law designed,

Why was an independent wish
E'er planted in my mind?

If not, why am I subject to

His cruelty or scorn?

Or why has man the will and power

To make his fellows mourn?

Oh death! the poor man's dearest friend,
The kindest and the best!

Welcome the hour my aged limbs

Are laid with thee at rest!

The great, the wealthy fear thy blow

From pomp and pleasure torn!

But oh! a blessed relief to those
That weary laden mourn!

Burns was a "jolly good fellow" with his village chums, and city admirers, and they saw him in his naked eccentricities and independence, when wit and wine ruled the midnight hour.

The sudden rise of the farmer rhymer to be lauded as the Scottish Bard at Edinburgh in the year 1787, where classical scholars, lords, earls and dukes praised his poetry and person, did not for a wonder, turn topsy-turvy the head of our genius.

In a letter to his literary friend, Dr. Moore, dated the 15th of February, 1787, he pertinently says: "Mere greatness never embarrassed me. I have nothing to ask from the great and I do not fear their judgment. I scorn the affectation of seeming modesty to cover self-conceit. That I have some merit I do not deny, but I see with frequent wringings of heart, that the novelty of my character and the honest natural prejudice of my countrymen have borne me to a height altogether untenable to my abilities!"'

Even in the banquet glare of his poetic glory he had "wringings of heart," that when the novelty of his rural rise had worn off, the applauding crowd would leave him to neglect, hunger and poverty. Sic semper.

"Bobby" Burns resurrected the ancient Caledonian songs, putting new words to old tunes and new tunes to old words. He caught the poetic inspiration of Ossian, Ramsey and Ferguson and pondered on the patriotic and heroic record of Robert Bruce and William Wallace.

Culloden and Flodden Field were battles of inspiration and glory for the Celtic Bard and he ever despised the AngloSaxon tyranny that forced a political union between England and Scotland.

Take the Celtic statesman, warrior, orator and poetIrish, Scotch and Welsh-out of the Anglo-Saxon history,

and there will be little left of England, but the husk without the corn, the pod without the peas, the stalk without the flax, and the voice without the wit!

The Gaelic dialect of his thistle fields and heather hills he seditiously injected into his poetry, although in his personal correspondence he used plain, plump, English terms, to satirize religious humbugs or lordly tyrants. He never knuckled to wealth and power, and even in the full bloom of his poetic renown at Edinburgh, he maintained his manhood and independence of thought.

The president and professors of the University of Edinburgh, the writers of the great literary Review and the lords, earls and dukes invited him to their banquet board and amid the glare and pomp of castle lights, where youth, beauty and talent prevailed, he was the star of the evening when the first flash of his rural genius irradiated the vales and crags of his native land.

In the days of "Bobby" Burns, and even now, the Scotch and Irish all of the Celtic race, were prone to indulge too much in drinking whiskey, and no people in the world have been desolated by drunkenness and religious fanaticism more than these brilliant people.

The jail, the poor-house, the rack and the stake have been fed by drunkenness and religious bigotry, Protestant and Catholic jailing and burning each other in turn, all on account of their opinion of an Unknown God!

Streams of blood through all the centuries run in the blistering track of the preacher and soldier, and our boasted Christian civilization of to-day is found constructing great guns, swift battleships, air balloons, smokeless powder and dynamite to murder mankind in future wars!

Burns inherited religion from his father and mother and the family reading of the Westminster Catechism and Saint