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Robert Louis Stevenson > A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods > VIII. The Counterblast—1886 |
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| CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD |
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| Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894). A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods. 1913. |
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VIII. The Counterblast—1886
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| MY bonny man, the warld, it’s true, | |
| Was made for neither me nor you; | |
| It’s just a place to warstle through, | |
| As Job confessed o’t; | |
| And aye the best that we’ll can do | 5 |
| Is mak the best o’t. | |
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| There’s rowth o’ wrang, I’m free to say: | |
| The simmer brunt, the winter blae, | |
| The face of earth a’ fyled wi’ clay | |
| An’ dour wi’ chuckies, | 10 |
| An’ life a rough an’ land’art play | |
| For country buckies. | |
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| An’ food’s anither name for clart; | |
| An’ beasts an’ brambles bite an’ scart; | |
| An’ what would WE be like, my heart! | 15 |
| If bared o’ claethin’? | |
| —Aweel, I cannae mend your cart: | |
| It’s that or naethin’. | |
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| A feck o’ folk frae first to last | |
| Have through this queer experience passed; | 20 |
| Twa-three, I ken, just damn an’ blast | |
| The hale transaction; | |
| But twa-three ithers, east an’ wast, | |
| Fand satisfaction. | |
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| Whaur braid the briery muirs expand, | 25 |
| A waefü’ an’ a weary land, | |
| The bumblebees, a gowden band, | |
| Are blithely hingin’; | |
| An’ there the canty wanderer fand | |
| The laverock singin’. | 30 |
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| Trout in the burn grow great as herr’n; | |
| The simple sheep can find their fair’n; | |
| The wind blaws clean about the cairn | |
| Wi’ caller air; | |
| The muircock an’ the barefit bairn | 35 |
| Are happy there. | |
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| Sic-like the howes o’ life to some: | |
| Green loans whaur they ne’er fash their thumb, | |
| But mark the muckle winds that come, | |
| Soopin’ an’ cool. | 40 |
| Or hear the powrin’ burnie drum | |
| In the shilfa’s pool. | |
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| The evil wi’ the guid they tak; | |
| They ca’ a gray thing gray, no black; | |
| To a steigh brae, a stubborn back | 45 |
| Addressin’ daily; | |
| An’ up the rude, unbieldy track | |
| O’ life, gang gaily. | |
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| What you would like’s a palace ha’, | |
| Or Sinday parlour dink an’ braw | 50 |
| Wi’ a’ things ordered in a raw | |
| By denty leddies. | |
| Weel, than, ye cannae hae’t: that’s a’ | |
| That to be said is. | |
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| An’ since at life ye’ve ta’en the grue, | 55 |
| An’ winnae blithely hirsle through, | |
| Ye’ve fund the very thing to do— | |
| That’s to drink speerit; | |
| An’ shüne we’ll hear the last o’ you— | |
| An’ blithe to hear it! | 60 |
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| The shoon ye coft, the life ye lead, | |
| Ithers will heir when aince ye’re deid; | |
| They’ll heir your tasteless bite o’ breid, | |
| An’ find it sappy; | |
| They’ll to your dulefü’ house succeed, | 65 |
| An’ there be happy. | |
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| As whan a glum an’ fractious wean | |
| Has sat an’ sullened by his lane | |
| Till, wi’ a rowstin’ skelp, he’s taen | |
| An’ shoo’d to bed— | 70 |
| The ither bairns a’ fa’ to play’n’, | |
| As gleg’s a gled. | |
