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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Cotter's Saturday Night</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Inscribed to Robert Aiken, Esq.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,<br> Their homely joys and destiny obscure;<br> Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile<br> The short and simple annals of the poor.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">  Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend!<br>No mercenary bard his homage pays;<br>With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,<br>My dearest meed a friend's esteem and praise:<br>To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,<br>The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene,<br>The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,<br>What Aiken in a cottage would have been;<br>Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh,<br>The short'ning winter-day is near a close;<br>The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh,<br>The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose:<br>The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,—<br>This night his weekly moil is at an end,—<br>Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,<br>Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,<br>And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">At length his lonely cot appears in view,<br>Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;<br>Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through<br>To meet their dead, wi' flichterin noise and glee.<br>His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie,<br>His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile,<br>The lisping infant, prattling on his knee,<br>Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile,<br>And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in,<br>At service out, amang the farmers roun';<br>Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin<br>A cannie errand to a neibor town:<br>Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,<br>In youthfu' bloom-love sparkling in her e'e—<br>Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new gown,<br>Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee,<br>To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With joy unfeign'd, brothers and sisters meet,<br>And each for other's weelfare kindly spiers:<br>The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnotic'd fleet:<br>Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears.<br>The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;<br>Anticipation forward points the view;<br>The mother, wi' her needle and her shears<br>, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;<br>The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Their master's and their mistress' command,<br>The younkers a' are warned to obey;<br>And mind their labours wi' an eydent hand,<br>And ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk or play;<br>"And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway,<br>And mind your duty, duly, morn and night;<br>Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray,<br>Implore His counsel and assisting might:<br>They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But hark! a rap comes gently to the door;<br>Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same,<br>Tells how a neibor lad came o'er the moor,<br>To do some errands, and convoy her hame.<br>The wily mother sees the conscious flame<br>Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek;<br>With heart-struck anxious care, enquires his name,<br>While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;<br>Weel-pleased the mother hears, it's nae wild, worthless rake.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben;<br>A strappin youth, he takes the mother's eye;<br>Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en;<br>The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.<br>The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy,<br>But blate an' laithfu', scarce can weel behave;<br>The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy<br>What makes the youth sae bashfu' and sae grave,<br>Weel-pleas'd to think her bairn's respected like the lave.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O happy love! where love like this is found:<br>O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!<br>I've paced much this weary, mortal round,<br>And sage experience bids me this declare,—<br>"If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare—<br>One cordial in this melancholy vale,<br>'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair<br>In other's arms, breathe out the tender tale,<br>Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Is there, in human form, that bears a heart,<br>A wretch! a villain! lost to love and truth!<br>That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art,<br>Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth?<br>Curse on his perjur'd arts! dissembling smooth!<br>Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd?<br>Is there no pity, no relenting ruth,<br>Points to the parents fondling o'er their child?<br>Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But now the supper crowns their simple board,<br>The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food;<br>The sowp their only hawkie does afford,<br>That, 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood:<br>The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,<br>To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell;<br>And aft he's prest, and aft he ca's it guid:<br>The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell<br>How t'was a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,<br>They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;<br>The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace,<br>The big ha'bible, ance his father's pride:<br>His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,<br>His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;<br>Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,<br>He wales a portion with judicious care;<br>And "Let us worship God!" he says with solemn air.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They chant their artless notes in simple guise,<br>They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;<br>Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise;<br>Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;<br>Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame;<br>The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:<br>Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame;<br>The tickl'd ears no heart-felt raptures raise;<br>Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The priest-like father reads the sacred page,<br>How Abram was the friend of God on high;<br>Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage<br>With Amalek's ungracious progeny;<br>Or how the royal bard did groaning lie<br>Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;<br>Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;<br>Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;<br>Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,<br>How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;<br>How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,<br>Had not on earth whereon to lay His head:<br>How His first followers and servants sped;<br>The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:<br>How he, who lone in Patmos banished,<br>Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,<br>And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounc'd by Heaven's command.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then, kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King,<br>The saint, the father, and the husband prays:<br>Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"<br>That thus they all shall meet in future days,<br>There, ever bask in uncreated rays,<br>No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,<br>Together hymning their Creator's praise,<br>In such society, yet still more dear;<br>While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Compar'd with this, how poor Religion's pride,<br>In all the pomp of method, and of art;<br>When men display to congregations wide<br>Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart!<br>The Power, incens'd, the pageant will desert,<br>The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;<br>But haply, in some cottage far apart,<br>May hear, well-pleas'd, the language of the soul;<br>And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way;<br>The youngling cottagers retire to rest:<br>The parent-pair their secret homage pay,<br>And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,<br>That he who stills the raven's clam'rous nest,<br>And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride,<br>Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,<br>For them and for their little ones provide;<br>But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">From scenes like these, old Scotia's grandeur springs,<br>That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad:<br>Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,<br>"An honest man's the noblest work of God;"<br>And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,<br>The cottage leaves the palace far behind;<br>What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load,<br>Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,<br>Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!<br>For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,<br>Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil<br>Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!<br>And O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent<br>From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!<br>Then howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,<br>A virtuous populace may rise the while,<br>And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov'd isle.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=116516" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O Thou! who pour'd the patriotic tide,<br>That stream'd thro' Wallace's undaunted heart,<br>Who dar'd to nobly stem tyrannic pride,<br>Or nobly die, the second glorious part:<br>(The patriot's God peculiarly thou art,<br>His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)<br>O never, never Scotia's realm desert;<br>But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard<br>In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Robert+Burns">Robert Burns</a></strong></div>