Combustion thro’ our boroughs rode,
     Whistling his roaring pack abroad
     Of mad unmuzzled lions;
     As Queensberry blue and buff unfurl’d,
     And Westerha’ and Hopetoun hurled
     To every Whig defiance.

     But cautious Queensberry left the war,
     Th’ unmanner’d dust might soil his star,
     Besides, he hated bleeding: 
     But left behind him heroes bright,
     Heroes in Caesarean fight,
     Or Ciceronian pleading.

     O for a throat like huge Mons-Meg,
     To muster o’er each ardent Whig
     Beneath Drumlanrig’s banners;
     Heroes and heroines commix,
     All in the field of politics,
     To win immortal honours.

     M’Murdo and his lovely spouse,
     (Th’ enamour’d laurels kiss her brows!)
     Led on the Loves and Graces: 
     She won each gaping burgess’ heart,
     While he, sub rosa, played his part
     Amang their wives and lasses.

     Craigdarroch led a light-arm’d core,
     Tropes, metaphors, and figures pour,
     Like Hecla streaming thunder: 
     Glenriddel, skill’d in rusty coins,
     Blew up each Tory’s dark designs,
     And bared the treason under.

     In either wing two champions fought;
     Redoubted Staig, who set at nought
     The wildest savage Tory;
     And Welsh who ne’er yet flinch’d his ground,
     High-wav’d his magnum-bonum round
     With Cyclopeian fury.

     Miller brought up th’ artillery ranks,
     The many-pounders of the Banks,
     Resistless desolation! 
     While Maxwelton, that baron bold,
     ’Mid Lawson’s port entrench’d his hold,
     And threaten’d worse damnation.

     To these what Tory hosts oppos’d
     With these what Tory warriors clos’d
     Surpasses my descriving;
     Squadrons, extended long and large,
     With furious speed rush to the charge,
     Like furious devils driving.

     What verse can sing, what prose narrate,
     The butcher deeds of bloody Fate,
     Amid this mighty tulyie! 
     Grim Horror girn’d, pale Terror roar’d,
     As Murder at his thrapple shor’d,
     And Hell mix’d in the brulyie.

     As Highland craigs by thunder cleft,
     When lightnings fire the stormy lift,
     Hurl down with crashing rattle;
     As flames among a hundred woods,
     As headlong foam from a hundred floods,
     Such is the rage of Battle.

     The stubborn Tories dare to die;
     As soon the rooted oaks would fly
     Before th’ approaching fellers: 
     The Whigs come on like Ocean’s roar,
     When all his wintry billows pour
     Against the Buchan Bullers.

     Lo, from the shades of Death’s deep night,
     Departed Whigs enjoy the fight,
     And think on former daring: 
     The muffled murtherer of Charles
     The Magna Charter flag unfurls,
     All deadly gules its bearing.