[Scottish songs] are, I own, frequently wild, & unreduceable to the more modern rules; but on that very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect.

Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, To step aside is human.

Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.

Auld Nature swears the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O; Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O!

I look on the opposite sex with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky on a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator's workmanship, I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of the motions, and then I wish both of them goodnight.

My Son, these maxims make a rule An lump them ay thegither: The Rigid Righteous is a fool, The Rigid Wise anither.

Not the bee upon the blossom, In the pride o' sunny noon; Not the little sporting fairy, All beneath the simmer moon; Not the poet, in the moment Fancy lightens in his e'e, Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture, That thy presence gi'es to me.