Hawthorne--The Celestial Railroad: "The road now plunged into a gorge of the Delectable Mountains, and traversed the field where, in former ages, the blind men wandered and stumbled among the tombs. One of these ancient tomb-stones had been thrust across the track, by some malicious person, and gave the train of cars a terrible jolt. Far up the rugged side of a mountain, I perceived a rusty iron door, half overgrown with bushes and creeping plants, but with smoke issuing from its crevices.
'Is that,' inquired I, 'the very door in the hill-side, which the shepherds assured Christian was a by-way to Hell?'
'That was a joke on the part of the shepherds,' said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a smile. 'It is neither more or less than the door of a cave, which they use as a smoke-house for the preparation of mutton hams.' "

Ives HAWTHORNE ["Essays Before a Sonata"]:

"If the same anyone happens to live in the 'Old Manse' near the Concord Battle
Bridge, he is likely 'of a rainy day to betake himself to the
huge garret,' the secrets of which he wonders at, 'but is too
reverent of their dust and cobwebs to disturb.' He is likely to
'bow below the shriveled canvas of an old (Puritan) clergyman in
wig and gown--the parish priest of a century ago--a friend of
Whitefield.' He is likely to come under the spell of this
reverend Ghost who haunts the 'Manse' and as it rains and darkens
and the sky glooms through the dusty attic windows, he is likely
'to muse deeply and wonderingly upon the humiliating fact that
the works of man's intellect decay like those of his hands'...
'that thought grows moldy,' and as the garret is in
Massachusetts, the 'thought' and the 'mold' are likely to be
quite native. When the same anyone puts his poetry into novels
rather than essays, he is likely to have more to say about the
life around him--about the inherited mystery of the town--than a
poet of philosophy is."

CHARLES Ives - "Concord" Sonata : "'Hawthorne,' the second-movement scherzo, is a phantasmogoria intended by Ives to depict the relentless of guilt, the elves in the forest, the Puritan past, and Hawthorne as the great national recorder of 19th-century American life. "

What people were overheard saying on the London Underground " Everything Morrissey predicted in the 80s is coming true."

from Jamie Reid--

A MEMORIAL READING for

JOHN NEWLOVE

will be held at the

VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 24 7:30 PM

READERS/SPEAKERS INCLUDE

Colin Browne, Pierre Coupey, Steve Duncan,
Warren Dean Fulton, Gerry Gilbert,
Tamsin and/or Jeremy Gilbert
Bernice Lever, Mike Matthews, John Pass,
Jamie Reid, Robert R. Reid,
George Stanley, Fred Wah.

The Bohemian Index

Letter to the Guardian "Star-struck--
Thanks to Alan Hollinghurst for discovering Frederick Tuckerman's poetry ('Intimacy with a stranger', January 31), but is the quoted star-description really 'unsurpassed'? Here is Basil Bunting's, from 'Briggflatts' (1965): '... Aldebaran, low in the clear east, / beckoning boats to the fishing. / Capella floats from the north / with shields hung on his gunwale. / That is no dinghy's lantern / occulted by the swell - Betelgeuse, / calling behind him to Rigel. / Starlight is almost flesh ... Furthest, fairest things, stars, free of our humbug, / each his own, the longer known the more alone, / wrapt in emphatic fire roaring out to a black flue ...' Surely Bunting takes the garland.
Mark Thompson
Oxford "

Alan Bennett on Denton Welch: " Minor writers often convey a more intense flavour of their times than those whose range is broader and concerns more profound. Here the war is met with at every turn, but transmuted into an idyllic pastoral of soldiers bathing, prisoners harvesting and planes crossing the moonlit sky to the sound of distant singing from the pub. As drunken servicemen ride their girlfriends home on the handlebars his diaries sometimes read like the script for a documentary by Humphrey Jennings or notes for a film by Michael Powell."

Kurt Schwitters' Hannover Merzbau

Happy Birthday Robert Burton author of Anatomy of Melancholy

The Age of Dryden: "Besides, the double Rhyme (a necessary companion of Burlesque writing) is not so proper for manly Satir, for it turns Earnest too much into Jest, and gives us a boyish kind of Pleasure. It tickles awkwardly with a kind of Pain to the best sort of Readers; and we are pleased ungratefully, and if I may say so, against our liking."

Sir Hudibras and Ralpho in the Stocks

William Hogarth--"Hubibras Sallying Forth"

Happy Birthday Samuel Butler author of Hudibras!

Perle and Frum's Death Metal: "Indeed, every sad word of "An End to Evil" oozes Perle's and Frum's pained, wasted 60s youths: wasted in yellow sheet stains, wasted studying maps color-coded with spheres-of-influence, wasted memorizing German armaments, and college years wasted playing Risk in their dorms while the socially successful hippies frolicked and fucked all around them. Perle and Frum will never forgive America for this humiliation and therefore they want to egg it on to its suicide by prodding it into a multi-front apocalyptic world war. "

more nuanced take on Currin by Jerry Saltz " Currin is sincere the way pornography is sincere: The line between what's feigned and unfeigned is blurred. When he's on, Currin opens a fascinatingly disquieting psycho-visual space. As with pornography, when he's off, his work turns unintentionally silly. "

A Tragedy of Errors--Lind on Frum and Perle: "Not since Stalin ordered the US Communist Party to go underground has an American political faction pretended to dissolve itself in public like this. "

Now They Tell Us "Watching and reading all this, one is tempted to ask, where were you all before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change—when, in short, it might have made a difference?"

Jed Perl opens a great big can of neocon whupass on John Currin--almost convincing until his way off base take on early vs. late Guston (blunt & anti-atmospheric? rosy sonatas? wha?) reveals his agenda as contrarian for its own sake--uninterested in painting per se

Homage to The Quiz: "Describing his style of play, he offered, 'Grass is a wonderful thing for little bugs and sinkerball pitchers.' "

whirling submarine delivery

Kansas City Star

NYT Obit for Dan Quisenberry

Quiz

Dan Quisenberry

"There is a telescope called Hubble
that can look so far into space
they say you can see thousands
of other galaxies and somebody said
they saw the face of Jesus if you
looked just right. But somebody else
said it looked more like Gene Shalit.
I don't know who is right. I don't see
anybody in the stars with these naked
eyes that turn red in the wind and itch
in the summer. I feel pretty good when
I can pick out the big dipper and its little
brother, but wonder sometimes when the
sky is laden black and those pinheads of
light seem to be winking at just me."

Dan Quisenberry, the poet

"I asked him if there was any relationship or metaphor in his poetry to match his side-arm style of pitching.

'To try to mix pitching and poetry is a stretch for me. In pitching, I was trying to win, beat the guy with the bat, do the team run-for-the-pennant thing. So much of that was physical; drive, win, beat, go. In poetry, I don't feel the competition; it isn't competition. It's mining, sifting, creative contemplation, more like swimming underwater and looking at stuff one doesn't see on the surface.' "

Happy Birthday pitcher/poet Dan Quisenberry!

"A manager uses a relief pitcher like a six shooter, he fires until its empty, takes the gun and throws it at the villain. "

"I found a delivery in my flaw."

Jack Nitzsche

Jack Nitzsche & St Giles Cripplegate

St Giles Cripplegate

Hard To Be Human Again by Michaelangelo Matos: "The part of the review where I suggest that Kylie should hook up with Luomo will have to remain on the cutting-room floor. "

Happy Birthday Kit Marlowe!

from the translation of "The First Book of Lucan"

All great things crush themselves, such end the gods
Allot the height of honor, men so strong
By land, and sea, no forreine force could ruine:
O Roome thy selfe art cause of all these evils ,
Thy selfe thus shivered out to three mens shares:
Dire league of partners in a kingdome last not.


O faintly joyn'd friends with ambition blind,
Why joine you force to share the world betwixt you?
While th'earth the sea, and ayre the earth sustaines;
While Titan strives against the worlds swift course;
Or Cynthia nights Queene waights upon the day;
Shall never faith be found in fellow kings.
Dominion cannot suffer partnership;
This need no forraine proofe, nor far fet story:
Roomes infant walles were steept in brothers bloud;
Nor then was land, or sea, to breed such hate ,
A towne with one poore church set them at oddes.

Gawker: "Lloyd's source says of the talk that 'It was the first time I've heard the word 'hermeneutically' used in Los Angeles,' to which I say: you need to spend more time getting stoned on the Chinatown gallery strip."

Jordan shakes it like a Polaroid picture--Ah I knew this would happen -- having to remind myself when in the elevator not to burst out into the chorus of track five from "The Love Below."

Oakland Sites of the Black Panther Party

Oakland Temescal storm tunnels

The Coup/Drug Warz:

"I bust the donut up in front of Wenchel's
Makin police state officials with fat bones
that's made of gristle test they torque to differential
Now it's essential, our problems ain't provincial
'fore a nurse call our bodies white chalk stencils
Broke as fuck, eatin lentils with no utensils
That type of struggle motivated my pencil
It ain't mental it's material
Police are the fist of the imperial, I'm spittin through your stereo
Babies need cereal, folks need currency
My job got a crowd wavin applications fervently
Some'll get accepted, most'll get rejected
Guess they gon' til the new prison get elected
and that'll solve they unemployment streak
They'll be makin microchips for two dollars a week
That's why they packin us in there in droves and fleets
And Channel Two gon' call it cleanin up the streets"

The Coup: "Political music, to be viable, has to have a movement to go along with it. If you're wearing the clothes and memorizing the lyrics, but you go home and you don't have anything in the refrigerator, you're gonna say, 'This music doesn't have anything to do with the material world.' "

Rhyme & Revolution: "The Coup"'s Boots Riley: "Like I said, every one had different stories about what happened; some of them matched up and some of the didn't, and that's what's gonna happen when you got a big crowd like that. But the one thing that did keep ringing true in each story was the fact that, when the police started shooting - and I don't know if you've ever been around when a gun is fired, but your first instinct is, 'lemme get the fuck up outta here because I could die right now' - so that's what everyone was thinking right then, and somebody started chanting 'Fight the power! Fight the power! Fight the power!' Now, that was the song at the time, in the summer of 1989. That Public Enemy song was out right then and that's what everyone was listening to, and that's what made everyone stop and think, 'Yeah, this one thing that we all know is right, that connects us all,' and we all went back, we stopped that from happening. That's when I knew that music could take a place in the movement."

all time high of 22, 534 at the "Child" level of Snood

"he wrote"

badass 70's watches

Ed Broadbent - NDP Candidate for Ottawa Centre Ed blogs

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads

Dub Syndicate--No Bed Of Roses Adrian at the controls!!

Goldfish revived after car crash adropos my frozen porchfish--they're tough. And they live into their 40's, if you follow the link.

Hope you lose, eh?

Talking Points Memo-- looks like both the Plame thing and AWOLgate might have legs

Happy Birthday all-time Scottish rock n roll king Alex Harvey!!

the well-nourished moon on "Once Upon a Time in Mexico": "Most of the writing on the latter film reminds me of a Shostakovich review shouted from stage during the recent Death of Meyerhold: 'Shostakovich's new symphony is a mess!' I'm slightly embarrassed to have loved every minute of it, even the bad special effects. (especially the handcuffed Depp and Hayek body doubles rag dolling down the side of their hotel onto a moving bus. Also the Banderas chase / fight scene on motorcycle.) Depp as Oedipus-CIA agent: (why am I writing a mastercharge 'priceless' sentence?) superlative, superlative."

The Early Days of a Better Nation: "The great scandal of Lenin was that he taught realpolitik to the lower classes and backward peoples. If the working class was ever to become a ruling class it had better start thinking like one, and for a ruling class there are no rules. "

Village Voice: Cheap Chow Now, Top 100 Latin Restaurants God I miss New York

found in this fine Outlaws and Highwaymen site:

Take away justice, then, and what are governments but great confederacies of robbers? After all, what are confederacies of robbers unless they are small-scale governments? The gang itself consists of men, it is directed by the authority of the chief, it is bound together by a pact of mutual support, and the loot is divided in accordance with an agreed law. If, as a result of the recruitment of desperadoes, this evil grows to such an extent that it takes control of a territory, establishes bases, occupies cities and subjugates peoples, then it assumes the name of a government, the more openly because this is now plainly applicable: not because the robbers have renounced their rapacity, but because they are no longer at risk of punishment. The reply that a captured pirate made to Alexander the Great was apposite and legitimate. For when the ruler asked the man how he could justify making the sea a dangerous place, he answered, with defiant outspokenness, ‘In exactly the way that you justify doing the same to the whole world. But because I do it with a single paltry ship, I am called a robber; while you do it with a large navy, and are called an emperor.’

St. Augustine of Hippo

DJ SCREW - free MP3 music downloads

David Banner - Mississippi: The Screwed and Chopped Album: "Banner's original manifesto is as much a regional document as the screwed and chopped style, perhaps more so. As the first Mississippi rapper ever signed to a major label, Banner's sense of isolation is palpable. 'The place where your grandmama scared to come/the place your mama ran from' he describes amid the barks and bluesy guitar of the intro, his voice slowed to a demonic growl. Mississippi is a dark, foreboding place, a place forgotten by the moral leveling of modern culture where Evil (in its grand Christian form) still lurks. Through the prism of Michael Watts' DJing, this world becomes more alien, more isolated, more menacing, and more distinctly Southern as well. "

Screwed and Chopped Survival Guide

Happy Birthday Gertrude Stein!

"CAKE.

Cake cast in went to be and needles wine needles are such.

This is today. A can experiment is that which makes a town, makes a town dirty, it is little please. We came back. Two bore, bore what, a mussed ash, ash when there is tin. This meant cake. It was a sign.

Another time there was extra a hat pin sought long and this dark made a display. The result was yellow. A caution, not a caution to be.

It is no use to cause a foolish number. A blanket stretch a cloud, a shame, all that bakery can tease, all that is beginning and yesterday yesterday we had it met. It means some change. No some day.

A little leaf upon a scene an ocean any where there, a bland and likely in the stream a recollection green land. Why white. "

John Fucking Kerry, Will the Real John Kerry Please Stand Up: "I spent a day on the campaign trail with Kerry in June and met both John Forbes Kerry and John Fucking Kerry: Forbes delivered cautious, bland responses to my questions; Fucking, in a series of self-depreciating asides, revealed his sense of fun and toughness. "

Christopher of Pulpfiction Books sent this better source for the work of Vancouver artist Evan Lee. Thanks!

Surprise, surprise: "Toronto pollster Pollara Inc. has found that just 15 per cent of Canadians would vote for the American president if they could cast a ballot south of the border."

Pub drinkers tested for drugs With the disgusting whitewash of the Hutton report & now this, the Magna Carta is just about in tatters these days--

Christian B. reviews Vollman in the Globe & Mail

Brooklyn less sweet

two below from Illustrations of the works of Lord Byron

Byron

The Corsair

'Tis late to think - but soft, his slumber breaks -
How heavily he sighs! - he starts - awakes!'

Byron's Corsair sells 10,000 copies on first day of publication, 1814

By those, that deepest feel, Is ill exprest
The indistinctness of the suffering breast;
Where thousand thoughts begin to end in one,
Which seeks from all the refuge found in none;
No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For Truth denies all eloquence to Woe.
On Conrad's stricken soul exhaustion prest,
And stupor almost lull'd it into rest;
So feeble now - his mother's softness crept
To those wild eyes, which like an infant's wept:
It was the very weakness of his brain,
Which thus confess'd without relieving pain.
None saw his trickling tears - perchance if seen,
That useless flood of grief had never been:
Nor long they flow'd - he dried them to
In helpless -hopeless - brokenness of heart:
The sun goes forth, but Conrad's day is dim;
And the night cometh - ne'er to pass from him.
There is no darkness like the cloud of mind,
On Grief's vain eye - the blindest of the blind!
Which may not - dare not see but turns aside
To blackest shade - nor will endure a guide!

canto 3 verse 22

meomi nice kitty stuff

Richard Holmes on Shelley's drowning myths: " Later still might have come the famous 'Odes to Electromagnetism', the seditious verse play about Chartism, the suppressed 'Essay on the Variety of Sexual Intercourse'. Finally perhaps, we can imagine him being scandalously elected as the first Professor of Poetry and Politics at the newly founded, and strictly secular, University of London. "

The Hidden Forest

kids & classic rock:
"Holly--It sounds like when your wee goes back up.
Beth-- Is this the Beatles?
Gabrielle --It's too rough and horrible.
Holly --It's a good tune but the singing is not good.
Ben --This is brilliant.
Beth --Ugh. I was born with Plasticine in my mouth?
Benjamin --He's getting things stuck in his mouth and he can't chew.
Ben-- And he's been arrested by a substitute. "

Online SSCrabble

photos from Evan Lee

do-it-yourself Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas

thanks Laurable for this Richard Brautigan mp3 link

Hektor.ch is under construction. very cool wall-drawing robot documentation mpeg via Antti

Northern Lights

Old Hampshire Mapped

Said's whole intro to Auerbach's "Mimesis": "It is not an exaggeration to say that, like Vico, Auerbach was at heart an autodidact, guided in his diverse explorations by a handful of deeply conceived and complex themes with which he wove his ample fabric, which was not seamless or effortlessly spun out. In Mimesis, he resolutely sticks to his practice of working from disconnected fragments: each of the book's chapters is marked not only by a new author who bears little overt relationship to earlier ones, but also by a new beginning, in terms of the author's perspective and stylistic outlook, so to speak. The 'representation' of reality is taken by Auerbach to mean an active dramatic presentation of how each author actually realizes, brings characters to life, and clarifies his or her own world; this of course explains why in reading the book we are compelled by the sense of disclosure that Auerbach affords us as he in turn re-realizes and interprets and, in his unassuming way, even seems to be staging the transmutation of a coarse reality into language and new life. "

Polish President held at Gander: "'We saw what it feels like when an unexpected guest arrives who in the beginning is treated as a potential illegal immigrant. And that is how we were treated,' Mr. Kwasniewski said. 'The passengers from my plane were held in a place where we could not leave. . . . it all took about three hours.'"

Popular: "The UK's 950+ Number One Hits since 1952, reviewed, in order, irregularly, for as long as I can bear to keep doing it. A history of pop in the shape of a chart. "

Bravo to show the films of Canadian indie auteur Larry Kent next month.

happy birthday JOSE MARTI - Cuba's Greatest Hero

Octopus Magazine has this & two other poems by Jacques Roubaud trans by the Waldrops:

Rues Madame and Monsieur



He walked one day on Rue Madame
One day she walked on Rue Monsieur
Rue Madame is laid with macadam
True no less for Rue Monsieur.

Gladly he strolled down Rue Madame
Calmly she ambled Rue Monsieur
A day without drama on Rue Madame
Delightful day on Rue Monsieur.

You can see the sky from Rue Madame
From Rue Monsieur the skies unfold
All cats are gray in Rue Madame
In Rue Monsieur all cats are old.

She never went down Rue Madame
He never went up Rue Monsieur
Never their eyes met flame with flame
Never a vow from either breast

And maybe that's all for the best.

He walked away by Rue Madame
She walked away by Rue Monsieur
Rue Madame is laid with macadam
True no less for Rue Monsieur.

via splinters

reading at subtext in Seattle:

February 4th--Jeff Derksen(Vancouver, BC) & Kreg Hasegawa (Seattle, WA)
Jeff Derksen is author of three books of poetry: Down Time, Dwell and Transnational Muscle Cars. His writing on art, urbanism, and imperialism has appeared in magazines in North America & Europe. He lives in Vancouver, B.C. where he works at Simon Fraser University. He is a member of the transnational poetry collective, The Social Mark.

Kreg Hasegawa lives in Seattle. He is coeditor of Monkey Puzzle, a stapled, 8 1/2 by 11 inch magazine of poetry and prose. His essays have appeared in The Stranger, Tablet, Copper Press, and The American Book Review. His work is due to appear in The News and The Ensign.

trailer for The Brown Bunny

Stephen Greenblatt on Rabelais and carnival: "Gargantua and Pantagruel is not carnival, but the brilliant aesthetic representation of carnival motifs; not the communal laughter of a largely illiterate populace, but the highly crafted, classicizing of a supremely literate individual, not festive mayhem in the streets, but words on a page. The difference - like the difference between the traditional Whitsun-ale an Englishman could still have seen in 1611 in dozens of country villages, and the Whitsun-ale he could have seen represented at the Globe Theater in The Winter's Tale - signals as much the break away from the festive mode as its continued vigor. "

Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, by Francois Rabelais with these and other Dore illustrations--

"With this I ran away a fair gallop-rake."

"All stiff drinkers, brave fellows, and good players at ninepins."

"The Master of Ringing Island"

Re-rack: "Sleep has long been thought to improve creativity. Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards said the riff in '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' came to him in his sleep, while the 19th-century chemist Dmitri Mendeleev literally dreamed up the periodic table of elements. "

Haggis all year long??: "Anyone who scarfs down a sidewalk-vendor smokie has no reason to balk at 'the chieftan o' the puddin-race'."

The Tyranny of Copyright: "The Copy Left sees innovations like iTunes, Apple's popular online music store, as the first step toward a society in which much of the cultural activity that we currently take for granted -- reading an encyclopedia in the public library, selling a geometry textbook to a friend, copying a song for a sibling -- will be rerouted through a system of micropayments in return for which the rights to ever smaller pieces of our culture are doled out. ''Sooner or later,'' predicts Miriam Nisbet, the legislative counsel for the American Library Association, ''you'll get to the point where you say, 'Well, I guess that 25 cents isn't too much to pay for this sentence,' and then there's no hope and no going back.'' "

The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man Comic Book!

John Mullan on Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Great Cham in LRB: "So the Jacobite army entered London in triumph. The King escaped westwards, but with only a small kernel of his forces, and the Royal Family, which had been waiting at Portsmouth for news of the battle, sailed into an exile that seemed likely to be permanent. "

NDP "needs to be watched": "But the real story is in more prosaic revivals of NDP spirit at the riding level.
Nanaimo-Cowichan, on Vancouver Island, is a good example. The riding used to be an NDP stronghold. (Tommy Douglas represented an earlier version of it.) But in 1993, Nanaimo-Cowichan was one of a swath of Western ridings that leapfrogged from the NDP to Reform (from one form of populist protest to another). By 2000, the NDP had sunk to a very poor third place in the riding.
But Jean Crowder, a popular local councillor, has already secured the NDP nomination, and is working the riding hard. If Mr. Layton is to stage a comeback for his party, the NDP will need to get voters in this and similar 'leapfrog ridings' to leap back."

Fiendish is back--

Merry Muses of Caledonia by Robert Burns

birthday of Robert Burns

Epistle to Davie, a Brother Poet

January

While winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,
An' bar the doors wi' driving snaw,
An' hing us owre the ingle,
I set me down to pass the time,
An' spin a verse or twa o' rhyme,
In hamely, westlin jingle.
While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
Ben to the chimla lug,
I grudge a wee the great-folk's gift,
That live sae bien an' snug:
I tent less, and want less
Their roomy fire-side;
But hanker, and canker,
To see their cursed pride.

It's hardly in a body's pow'r
To keep, at times, frae being sour,
To see how things are shar'd;
How best o' chiels are whiles in want,
While coofs on countless thousands rant,
And ken na how to wair't;
But, Davie, lad, ne'er fash your head,
Tho' we hae little gear;
We're fit to win our daily bread,
As lang's we're hale and fier:
"Mair spier na, nor fear na,"^1
Auld age ne'er mind a feg;
The last o't, the warst o't
Is only but to beg.

To lie in kilns and barns at e'en,
When banes are craz'd, and bluid is thin,
Is doubtless, great distress!
Yet then content could make us blest;
Ev'n then, sometimes, we'd snatch a taste
Of truest happiness.
The honest heart that's free frae a'
Intended fraud or guile,
However Fortune kick the ba',
Has aye some cause to smile;
An' mind still, you'll find still,
A comfort this nae sma';
Nae mair then we'll care then,
Nae farther can we fa'.

What tho', like commoners of air,
We wander out, we know not where,
But either house or hal',
Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods,
The sweeping vales, and foaming floods,
Are free alike to all.
In days when daisies deck the ground,
And blackbirds whistle clear,
With honest joy our hearts will bound,
To see the coming year:
On braes when we please, then,
We'll sit an' sowth a tune;
Syne rhyme till't we'll time till't,
An' sing't when we hae done.

It's no in titles nor in rank;
It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank,
To purchase peace and rest:
It's no in makin' muckle, mair;
It's no in books, it's no in lear,
To make us truly blest:
If happiness hae not her seat
An' centre in the breast,
We may be wise, or rich, or great,
But never can be blest;
Nae treasures, nor pleasures
Could make us happy lang;
The heart aye's the part aye
That makes us right or wrang.

Think ye, that sic as you and I,
Wha drudge an' drive thro' wet and dry,
Wi' never-ceasing toil;
Think ye, are we less blest than they,
Wha scarcely tent us in their way,
As hardly worth their while?
Alas! how aft in haughty mood,
God's creatures they oppress!
Or else, neglecting a' that's guid,
They riot in excess!
Baith careless and fearless
Of either heaven or hell;
Esteeming and deeming
It's a' an idle tale!

Then let us cheerfu' acquiesce,
Nor make our scanty pleasures less,
By pining at our state:
And, even should misfortunes come,
I, here wha sit, hae met wi' some-
An's thankfu' for them yet.
They gie the wit of age to youth;
They let us ken oursel';
They make us see the naked truth,
The real guid and ill:
Tho' losses an' crosses
Be lessons right severe,
There's wit there, ye'll get there,
Ye'll find nae other where.

But tent me, Davie, ace o' hearts!
(To say aught less wad wrang the cartes,
And flatt'ry I detest)
This life has joys for you and I;
An' joys that riches ne'er could buy,
An' joys the very best.
There's a' the pleasures o' the heart,
The lover an' the frien';
Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part,
And I my darling Jean!
It warms me, it charms me,
To mention but her name:
It heats me, it beets me,
An' sets me a' on flame!

O all ye Pow'rs who rule above!
O Thou whose very self art love!
Thou know'st my words sincere!
The life-blood streaming thro' my heart,
Or my more dear immortal part,
Is not more fondly dear!
When heart-corroding care and grief
Deprive my soul of rest,
Her dear idea brings relief,
And solace to my breast.
Thou Being, All-seeing,
O hear my fervent pray'r;
Still take her, and make her
Thy most peculiar care!

All hail! ye tender feelings dear!
The smile of love, the friendly tear,
The sympathetic glow!
Long since, this world's thorny ways
Had number'd out my weary days,
Had it not been for you!
Fate still has blest me with a friend,
In ev'ry care and ill;
And oft a more endearing band-
A tie more tender still.
It lightens, it brightens
The tenebrific scene,
To meet with, and greet with
My Davie, or my Jean!

O, how that name inspires my style!
The words come skelpin, rank an' file,
Amaist before I ken!
The ready measure rins as fine,
As Phoebus an' the famous Nine
Were glowrin owre my pen.
My spaviet Pegasus will limp,
Till ance he's fairly het;
And then he'll hilch, and stilt, an' jimp,
And rin an unco fit:
But least then the beast then
Should rue this hasty ride,
I'll light now, and dight now
His sweaty, wizen'd hide.