Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth? Curse on his perjur'd arts! dissembling smooth! Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exil'd? Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, Points to the parents fondling o'er their child, Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild? 11 But now the supper crowns their simple board, The halesome parritch,21 chief of Scotia's food; The sowpe22 their only hawkie23 does afford, That yont 24 the hallan 25 snugly chows her cud. The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd 26 kebbuck fell,27 An' aft 28 he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid; The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, How 'twas a towmond 29 auld, sin' lint 30 was i' the bell. The priest-like father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. 15 Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; How He, who bore in heav'n the second name, Had not on earth whereon to lay His head: How His first followers and servants sped; The precepts sage they wrote to many a land; How he, who lone in Patmos banished, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by Heav'n's command. 16 Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays: 25 incites, kindles "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, When wearing thro' the afternoon, The first I'll name, they ca'd him Caesar, His locked, letter'd, braw3 brass collar The tither was a plowman's collie, 6 A rhyming, ranting, raving billie, He was a gash 10 an' faithfu' tyke, cannot accomplish & cur 10 wise • smithy 11 ditch 7 prize 12 white-streaked 13 big and joyous 14 haunches 15 moles 16 digged 17 larking is knoll |