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The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield, But thou beneath the random bield

O' clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble-field

Unseen, alane.

There in thy scanty mantle clad
Thy snawy bosom, sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;

But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

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Such is the fate of simple bard,

On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd!
Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven

To mis'ry's brink,

Till wrench'd of every stay but Heav'n,
He, ruin'd, sink !

Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine-no distant date;

Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,

Full on thy bloom,

Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight,
Shall be thy doom!

A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT.

Is there, for honest poverty,

That hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward-slave we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,

Our toil's obscure, and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea-stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that!

What tho' on homely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that!

For a' that, and a' that,

Their tinsel show, and a' that,
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king of men for a' that!

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,

Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,

His riband, star, and a' that,
The man of independent mind
He looks and laughs at a' that!

A king can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;

But an honest man's aboon his might,
Guid faith he mauna fa' that!

For a' that, and a' that,

Their dignities, and a' that,
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may—
As come it will for a' that—

That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that,
For a' that, and a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That man to man, the warld o’er,
Shall brothers be for a' that!

DEVOTION.

NEW YEAR'S DAY MORNING, 1789.

I own. that I approve set times, seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habituated routine of life and thought which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little superior to mere machinery.

This day-the first Sunday of May-a breezy, blueskied noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary

morning, and calm sunny day, about the end of autumn-these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday.

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I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the Spectator, The Vision of Mirza,' a piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables: "On the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdad, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer."

We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which on minds of a different cast makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never heard the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild, mixing cadence of a troop of grey plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Eolian harp, passive takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us

above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities-a God that made all things-man's immaterial and immortal nature-and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave!

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