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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=506441" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Cotter's Saturday Night, The</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Inscribed to Robert Aiken, Esq.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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. <br> (Gray, &quot;Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard&quot;)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 dad, wi' flichterin noise an' 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>An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 toun:<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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With joy unfeign'd, brothers and sisters meet,<br>An' 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 an' her sheers,<br>Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;<br>The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Their master's an' their mistress's command<br>The younkers a' are warned to obey;<br>An' mind their labours wi' an eydent hand,<br>An' ne'er tho' out o' sight, to jauk or play:<br>&quot;An' O! be sure to fear the Lord alway,<br>An' mind your duty, duly, morn an' 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!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But hark! a rap comes gently to the door.<br>Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same,<br>Tells how a neebor lad cam 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>Wi' heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name,<br>While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;<br>Weel-pleas'd the mother hears, it's nae wild, worthless rake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 taen;<br>The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.<br>The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy,<br>But, blate and laithfu', scarce can weel behave;<br>The mother wi' a woman's wiles can spy<br>What maks the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave,<br>Weel pleas'd to think her bairn's respected like the lave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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>&quot;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 ev'ning gale.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 truth,<br>Points to the parents fondling o'er their child,<br>Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But now the supper crowns their simple board,<br>The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food;<br>The soupe their only hawkie does afford,<br>That yont the hallan snugly chows her cud.<br>The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,<br>To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck fell,<br>An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid;<br>The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell,<br>How 'twas a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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, &quot;Let us worship God,&quot; he says with solemn air.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 ear no heart-felt raptures raise;<br>Nae unison hae they, with our Creator's praise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King,<br>The saint, the father, and the husband prays:<br>Hope &quot;springs exulting on triumphant wing,&quot;<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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 Pow'r, 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 enrol.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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 Heav'n 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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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>&quot;An honest man's the noblest work of God&quot;:<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!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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, oh! 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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">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!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+Burns">Robert Burns</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=506441" data-title="Cotter's Saturday Night, The de Robert Burns" data-description="Inscribed to Robert Aiken, Esq.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure; 
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 
 (Gray, &quot;Elegy Written in a Country Church..."></div>
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