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Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Chapter 258: Ode, Sacred To The Memory Of Mrs. Oswald Of Auchencruive
By Robert Burns
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About This Book

The collection assembles lyrical songs, narrative poems, satirical pieces, epistles, epitaphs, and fragments that shift between convivial drinking verses, tender laments, and comic storytelling. Many lyrics were shaped to traditional airs and preserve vernacular speech, while longer works portray rural labor, domestic scenes, and compassionate encounters with animals. Satire targets religious hypocrisy and social pretension, and several poems take a direct, personal tone of moral reflection or affectionate address. The selections alternate moods and forms, emphasizing melodic phrasing and a versatile technical range.

Ode, Sacred To The Memory Of Mrs. Oswald Of Auchencruive

Dweller in yon dungeon dark, Hangman of creation! mark, Who in widow-weeds appears, Laden with unhonour’d years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse?
Strophe View the wither’d Beldam’s face; Can thy keen inspection trace Aught of Humanity’s sweet, melting grace? Note that eye, ’tis rheum o’erflows; Pity’s flood there never rose, See these hands ne’er stretched to save, Hands that took, but never gave: Keeper of Mammon’s iron chest, Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest, She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest!
Antistrophe Plunderer of Armies! lift thine eyes, (A while forbear, ye torturing fiends;) Seest thou whose step, unwilling, hither bends? No fallen angel, hurl’d from upper skies; ’Tis thy trusty quondam Mate, Doom’d to share thy fiery fate; She, tardy, hell-ward plies.
Epode And are they of no more avail, Ten thousand glittering pounds a-year? In other worlds can Mammon fail, Omnipotent as he is here! O, bitter mockery of the pompous bier, While down the wretched Vital Part is driven! The cave-lodged Beggar,with a conscience clear, Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to Heaven.