Page:Beauties of Burn's poems.pdf/37

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For a' the real judges rise,
 They canna sit for anger.
——— opens out his cauld harangues,
 On practice and on morals;
And aff the godly pour in thrangs,
 To gie the jars and barrels
A lift that day.

What signifies his barren shine,
 Of moral powers and reason?
His English style and gestures fine,
 Are a' clean out o' season.
Like Socrates or Antonine,
 Or some auld pagan heathen,
The moral man he does define,
 But ne'er a word o' faith in
That's right that day.

In good time comes an antidote
 Against sic poison'd nostram;
For ———, frae the water-fit,
 Ascends the holy rostrum:
See, up he's got the word o' G—,
 And meek and mim has view'd it,
While Common-Sense has taen the road,
 And aff, and up the Cowgate^[1],
Fast, fast, that day.

Wee ———, neist, the guard relieves,
 And Orthodoxy raibles,
Tho' in his heart he weel believes,
 And thinks it auld wives' fables:
But faith the birkie wants a Manse,
 So cannily he hums them;

1. A Street so called, which faces the Tent in ———