Oh! little lock of golden hue
In gently waving ringlet curl'd,
By the dear head on which you grew,
I would not lose you for _a world_.
Not though a thousand more adorn
The polished brow where once you shone,
Like rays which guild a cloudless sky [i]
Beneath Columbia's fervid zone.
1806.
[Footnote 1: These lines are preserved in MS. at Newstead, with the
following memorandum in Miss Pigot's handwriting: "Copied from the
fly-leaf in a vol. of my Burns' books, which is written in pencil by
himself." They have hitherto been printed as stanzas 5 and 6 of the
lines "To a Lady," etc., p. 212.]
[Footnote i:
_a cloudless morn_.
['Ed'. 1832.]