from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle

The function, as it seems to me, O’ Poetry is to bring to be At lang, lang last that unity ... But wae’s me on the weary wheel! Higgledy-piggledy in’t we reel, And little it cares hoo we may feel. Twenty-six thoosand years ’t’ll tak’ For it to threid the Zodiac —A single roond o’ the wheel to mak’! Lately it turned—I saw mysel’ In sic a company doomed to mell, I micht ha’e been in Dante’s Hell. It shows hoo little the best o’ men E’en o’ themsels at times can ken— I sune saw that when I gaed ben. The lesser wheel within the big That moves as merry as a grig, Wi’ mankind in its whirligig, And hasna turned a’e circle yet Tho’ as it turns we slide in it, And needs maun tak’ the place we get. I felt it turn, and syne I saw John Knox and Clavers in my raw, And Mary Queen o’ Scots ana’, And Rabbie Burns and Weelum Wallace, And Carlyle lookin’ unco gallus, And Harry Lauder (to enthrall us). And as I looked I saw them a’, A’ the Scots baith big and sma’, That e’er the braith o’ life did draw. ‘Mercy o’ Gode, I canna thole Wi’ sic an orra mob to roll.’ —‘Wheesht! It’s for the guid o’ your soul.’ ‘But what’s the meanin’, what’s the sense?’ —‘Men shift but by experience. ’Twixt Scots there is nae difference. They canna learn, sae canna move, But stick for aye to their auld groove —The only race in History who’ve Bidden in the same category Frae stert to present o’ their story, And deem their ignorance their glory. The mair they differ, mair the same. The wheel can whummle a’ but them, —They ca’ their obstinacy “Hame,” And “Puir Auld Scotland” bleat wi’ pride, And wi’ their minds made up to bide A thorn in a’ the wide world’s side. There ha’e been Scots wha ha’e ha’en thochts, They’re strewn through maist o’ the various lots —Sic traitors are nae Langer Scots!’