Carlyle's Essays on Burns Author:Thomas Carlyle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: POEMS FROM BURNS THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESQ., OF ATE Let not Ambition mock their useful toil. Their homely joys, and desti... more »ny obscure ; Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the Poor. — Gray. My lov'd, my honor'd, much respected friend! No mercenary bard his homage pays; With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end, My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise: To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways; What Aiken in a cottage would have been; Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween, November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh; The short'ning winter-day is near a close ; 103 The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The blaek'ning trains o' craws to their repose: The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes, This night his weekly moil is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. At length his lonely cot appears in view, Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through To meet their ' dad,' wi' flichterin noise an' glee. His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie, His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile, The lisping infant prattling on his knee, Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, An' makes him quite forget his labor an' his toil. Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, At service out, amang the farmers roun'; Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rir, A cannie errand to a neibor town: Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown, In youthfu' bloom — love sparkling in her e'...« less