"Oh, ye wha are sae guid yoursel',
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell
Your neebors' fauts and folly,--
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supplied wi' store o' water,
The heaped happer's ebbing still,
And still the clap plays clatter,--
"Hear me, ye venerable core,
As counsel for poor mortals,
That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door
For glaikit Folly's portals!
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes,
Would here propone defences,
Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,
Their failings and mischances."
Alas for it! we must all say, in dwelling upon the life of poor Burns,
that he so frequently needed to appear as counsel for poor mortals--in
his own behoof; and that "their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,
their failings and mischances" should form so large a portion of the
record of that life, which under other circumstances might have been one
of the most brilliant and beautiful of all in the annals of genius. For
Burns, although born to such a lowly life, and having in his youth so
few advantages of education or general culture, might by sheer force of
genius have attained as proud a position as any man of his time, had he
but learned to rule over himself in his youth, and not given full rein
to those passions which his "veins convulsed," and which "still eternal
galloped."