Robert Burns

To a Louse

 On seeing one on a lady’s bonnet at church.

HA! wh’are ye gaun, ye crowlin’ ferlie!
Your impudence protects you sairly:
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
    Owre gauze and lace;
Tho’ faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
    On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin’, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner!
How dare ye set your fit upon her,
    Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else, and seek your dinner
    On some poor body.

Swith, in some beggar’s haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle
Wi’ ither kindred jumping cattle,
    In shoals and nations;
Where horn nor bane ne’er dare unsettle
    Your thick plantations.

Now haud ye there, ye’re out o’ sight,
Below the fatt’rels, snug an’ tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right
    Till ye’ve got on it,
The very tapmost tow’ring height
    O’ Miss’s bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump and gray as onie grozet;
O for some rank mercurial rozet,
    Or fell red smeddum!
I’d gie you sic a hearty doze o’t,
    Wad dress your droddum!

I wad na been surpris’d to spy
You on an auld wife’s flannen toy;
Or aiblins some bit duddie boy,
    On’s wyliecoat;
But Miss’s fine Lunardi! fie,
    How daur ye do’t?

O Jenny, dinna toss your head,
An’ set your beauties a’ abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
    The blastie’s makin’!
Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread,
    Are notice takin’!

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
    And foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
    And ev’n devotion!