Poem by Robert Burns

* * *

No churchman am I for to rail and to write,
No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight,
No sly man of business contriving a snare,
For a big-bellied bottle’s the whole of my care.

The peer I don’t envy, I give him his bow;
I scorn not the peasant, tho’ ever so low;
But a club of good fellows, like those that are there,
And a bottle like this, are my glory and care.

Here passes the squire on his brother-his horse;
There centum per centum, the cit with his purse;
But see you the Crown how it waves in the air?
There a big-bellied bottle still eases my care.

The wife of my bosom, alas! she did die:
For sweet consolation to church I did fly;
I found that old Solomon proved it fair,
That the big-bellied bottle’s a cure for all care.

I once was persuaded a venture to make;
A letter inform’d me that all was to wreck;
But the pursy old landlord just waddled up stairs
With a glorious bottle that ended my cares.

‘Life’s cares they are comforts,’ a maxim laid down
By the bard, what d’ye call him? that wore the black gown,
And, faith, I agree with th’ old prig to a hair,
For a big-bellied bottle’s a heav’n of a care.

        (Added in a Mason Lodge)

Then fill up a bumper, and make it o’erflow,
And honours masonic prepare for to throw;
May every true brother of the compass and square
Have a big-bellied bottle when harass’d with care.

1. Blythe Was She
2. I Gaed a Waefu' Gate Yestreen
3. The Flowery Banks of Cree
4. The Banks of Nith (THE THAMES flows proudly to the sea)
5. Farewell to Ballochmyle

Print

2952 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version