Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

VI. Animate Nature

To a Louse

Robert Burns (1759–1796)

HA! whare ye gaun, ye crawlin’ ferlie?

Your impudence protects you sairly:

I canna say but ye strunt rarely

Owre gauze an’ lace;

Though, faith! I fear ye dine but sparely

On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin’, blastit wonner,

Detested, shunned by saunt an’ sinner,

How dare you set your fit upon her,

Sae fine a lady?

Gae somewhere else, and seek your dinner

On some poor body.

Swith, in some beggar’s haffet squattle;

There ye may creep and sprawl and sprattle

Wi’ ither kindred, jumping cattle,

In shoals and nations:

Whare horn nor bane ne’er daur unsettle

Your thick plantations.

Now baud you there, ye’re out o’ sight,

Below the fatt’rels, snug an’ tight;

Na, faith, ye yet! ye ’ll no be right

Till ye ’ve got on it,

The very tapmost tow’ring height

O’ Miss’s bonnet.

My sooth; right bauld ye set your nose out,

As plump and gray as ony grozet;

O for some rank, mercurial rozet,

Or fell, red smeddum!

I ’d gie you sic a hearty dose o’t,

Wad dress your droddum!

I wad na been surprised to spy

You on an auld wife’s flannen toy;

Or aiblins some bit duddie boy,

On ’s wyliecoat;

But Miss’s fine Lunardi, fie!

How daur ye do ’t?

O Jenny, dinna toss your head,

An’ set your beauties a’ abread!

Ye little ken what cursèd speed

The blastie ’s makin’!

Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread,

Are notice takin’!

O wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursel’s as others see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us,

And foolish notion:

What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,

And ev’n devotion!