“There was an honest poet once on earth
Who beat all other bardies at a canter;
Rob’ Burns his mother called him at his birth. 
Though handicapped by rum and much a ranter,
He won the madcap race in Tam O’Shanter. 
He drove a spanking span from Scottish heather,
Strong-limbed, but light of foot as flea or feather—­
Rhyme and Reason, matched and yoked together,
And reined them with light hand and limber leather. 
He wrote to me once on a time—­I mind it—­
A bold epistle and the poet signed it. 
He thought to cheat “Auld Nickie” of his dues,
But who outruns the Devil casts his shoes;
And so at last from frolicking and drinkin’,
‘Some luckless hour’ sent him to Hell ’alinkin’![CW]
Times had been rather dull in my dominion,
And all my imps like lubbers lay a snoring,
But Burns began to rhyme us his opinion,
And in ten minutes had all Hell aroaring. 
Then Robbie pulled his book of poems out
And read us sundry satires from the book;
‘Death and Doctor Hornbook’ raised a shout
Till all the roof-tin on the rafters shook;
And when his ‘Unco Guid’ the bardie read
The crew all clapped their hands and yelled like mad;
But ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ ‘brought down the house’. 
So I was glad to give the bard a pass
And a few pence for toll at Peter’s gate;
For if the roof of Hell were made of brass
Bob Burns would shake it off as sure as fate. 
I mind it well—­that poem on a louse! 
‘O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us,’ Monk,
’To see oursels as others see us’—­drunk;
’It wad frae monie a blunder free us’—­list!—­
‘And foolish notion.’  Abbot, bishop, priest,
‘What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e’ you all,
‘And ev’n devotion.’  Cowls and robes would fall,
And sometimes leave a bishop but a beast,
And show a leper sore where erst they made a priest.”

[CW] Tripping.  See Burns’ “Address to the Deil”

Not to be beat the jolly monk filled up His silver mug with rare old Burgundy; “Here’s to your health,” he said, “your Majesty”—­ And drained the brimming goblet at a gulp—­ “’For when the Devil was sick the Devil a monk would be; But when the Devil got well a devil a monk was he.’ In vino veritas is true, no doubt—­ When wine goes in teetotal truth comes out.  To shake a little Shakespeare in the wine:  ‘Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall’; But in the realm of Fate, as I opine, A devil a virtue is or sin at all.  ‘The Devil be damned’ is what we preach, you know it—­ At mass and vespers, holy-bread and dinner:  From priest to pope, from pedagogue to poet, We sanctify the sin and damn the sinner.  This poet Shakespeare, whom I read with pleasure,
Wrote once—­I think, in taking his own ’Measure’:—­
’They say best men are molded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.’  The reason halts: