“Conceited gowk! puff’d up wi’ windy pride!
This mony a year I’ve stood the flood an’ tide;
And tho’ wi’ crazy eild I’m sair forfairn,
I’ll be a brig when ye’re a shapeless cairn!
As yet ye little ken about the matter,
But twa—three winters will inform ye better.
When heavy, dark, continued, a’-day rains,
[Footnote 4: A noted ford, just above the Auld Brig.—R. B.]
Wi’ deepening deluges o’erflow the plains;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar’s mossy fountains boil;
Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course.
Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source,
Aroused by blustering winds an’ spotting thowes,
In mony a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes;
While crashing ice, borne on the rolling spate,
Sweeps dams, an’ mills, an’ brigs, a’ to the gate;
And from Glenbuck,^5 down to the Ratton-key,^6
Auld Ayr is just one lengthen’d, tumbling sea—
Then down ye’ll hurl, (deil nor ye never rise!)
And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies!
A lesson sadly teaching, to your cost,
That Architecture’s noble art is lost!”