Page:Alloway Kirk or Tam o Shanter a tale and man was made to mourn a poem with a sketch of burnss life.pdf/15

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Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O’er a’ the ills of life victorious!

⁠But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or, like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white--then melts for ever:
Or like the Borealis race,
That flit ere you can point the place:
Or like the rainbows lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm.—
Nae man can tether Time or Tide,
The hour approaches, Tam maun ride;
That hour, o’ night’s black arch the keystane,
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in,
And sic a night he taks the road in,
As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in.

⁠The win’ blew as ’twad blawn its last
The rattlin showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d,
Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellow’d:
That night a child might understand,
The deil had business on his hand.—

⁠Weel mounted on his gray mare Meg.
A better never lifted leg,
Tam skelpt on thro’ dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain and fire;
Whiles hadding fast his gude blew bonnet;
Whiles crooning o’er an auld Scots sonnet;