Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894). A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods. 1913.
VIII. The Counterblast1886
M
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
Is mak the best o’t.
The simmer brunt, the winter blae,
The face of earth a’ fyled wi’ clay
An’ dour wi’ chuckies,
An’ life a rough an’ land’art play
For country buckies.
An’ beasts an’ brambles bite an’ scart;
An’ what would WE be like, my heart!
If bared o’ claethin’?
—Aweel, I cannae mend your cart:
It’s that or naethin’.
Have through this queer experience passed;
Twa-three, I ken, just damn an’ blast
The hale transaction;
But twa-three ithers, east an’ wast,
Fand satisfaction.
A waefü’ an’ a weary land,
The bumblebees, a gowden band,
Are blithely hingin’;
An’ there the canty wanderer fand
The laverock singin’.
The simple sheep can find their fair’n;
The wind blaws clean about the cairn
Wi’ caller air;
The muircock an’ the barefit bairn
Are happy there.
Green loans whaur they ne’er fash their thumb,
But mark the muckle winds that come,
Soopin’ an’ cool.
Or hear the powrin’ burnie drum
In the shilfa’s pool.
They ca’ a gray thing gray, no black;
To a steigh brae, a stubborn back
Addressin’ daily;
An’ up the rude, unbieldy track
O’ life, gang gaily.
Or Sinday parlour dink an’ braw
Wi’ a’ things ordered in a raw
By denty leddies.
Weel, than, ye cannae hae’t: that’s a’
That to be said is.
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!
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,
An’ there be happy.
Has sat an’ sullened by his lane
Till, wi’ a rowstin’ skelp, he’s taen
An’ shoo’d to bed—
The ither bairns a’ fa’ to play’n’,
As gleg’s a gled.