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Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 95: POORTITH CAULD
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About This Book

A collected selection of the poet's songs and shorter lyrics presents his explorations of love, nature, rural Scottish life, patriotism, and social observation, often rendered in Scots dialect and intended for musical performance. The volume groups brief pieces alongside several longer poems, supplies a glossary of dialect terms and an index of first lines, and includes illustrative plates. Many lyrics evoke landscapes, domestic scenes, and communal gatherings, balancing tenderness and satire while varying tone from celebratory to elegiac. The arrangement favors lyrical vitality rather than strict chronology, offering readers both popular airs and more extended narrative poems within a single accessible anthology.

POORTITH CAULD

O poortith cauld, and restless love,
Ye wreck my peace between ye;
Yet poortith a’ I could forgive,
An’ ’twerena for my Jeanie.
O why should fate sic pleasure have
Life’s dearest bands untwining?
Or why sae sweet a flower as love
Depend on Fortune’s shining?
This warld’s wealth when I think on,
Its pride, and a’ the lave o’t,—
O fie on silly coward man,
That he should be the slave o’t.
Her een sae bonnie blue betray
How she repays my passion;
But prudence is her o’erword aye,
She talks of rank and fashion.
O wha can prudence think upon,
And sic a lassie by him?
O wha can prudence think upon,
And sae in love as I am?
How blest the simple cotter’s fate!
He woos his artless dearie;
The silly bogles, wealth and state,
Can never make him eerie.
O why should fate, etc.