Now fare ye weel, an’ joy be wi’ you: 
     For my sake, this I beg it o’ you,
     Assist poor Simson a’ ye can,
     Ye’ll fin; him just an honest man;
     Sae I conclude, and quat my chanter,
     Your’s, saint or sinner,
     Rob the Ranter.

A New Psalm For The Chapel Of Kilmarnock

On the Thanksgiving-Day for His Majesty’s Recovery.

     O sing a new song to the Lord,
     Make, all and every one,
     A joyful noise, even for the King
     His restoration.

     The sons of Belial in the land
     Did set their heads together;
     Come, let us sweep them off, said they,
     Like an o’erflowing river.

     They set their heads together, I say,
     They set their heads together;
     On right, on left, on every hand,
     We saw none to deliver.

     Thou madest strong two chosen ones
     To quell the Wicked’s pride;
     That Young Man, great in Issachar,
     The burden-bearing tribe.

     And him, among the Princes chief
     In our Jerusalem,
     The judge that’s mighty in thy law,
     The man that fears thy name.

     Yet they, even they, with all their strength,
     Began to faint and fail: 
     Even as two howling, ravenous wolves
     To dogs do turn their tail.

     Th’ ungodly o’er the just prevail’d,
     For so thou hadst appointed;
     That thou might’st greater glory give
     Unto thine own anointed.

     And now thou hast restored our State,
     Pity our Kirk also;
     For she by tribulations
     Is now brought very low.

     Consume that high-place, Patronage,
     From off thy holy hill;
     And in thy fury burn the book—­
     Even of that man M’Gill.^1

     Now hear our prayer, accept our song,
     And fight thy chosen’s battle: 
     We seek but little, Lord, from thee,
     Thou kens we get as little.

[Footnote 1:  Dr. William M’Gill of Ayr, whose “Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ” led to a charge of heresy against him.  Burns took up his cause in “The Kirk of Scotland’s Alarm” (p. 351).—­Lang.]

Sketch In Verse

     Inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox.

     How wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite,
     How Virtue and Vice blend their black and their white,
     How Genius, th’ illustrious father of fiction,
     Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,
     I sing:  If these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
     I care not, not I—­let the Critics go whistle!

     But now for a Patron whose name and whose glory,
     At once may illustrate and honour my story.