Robert Burns

Lines on an Interview with Lord Daer

This wot ye all whom it concerns,
I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns,
    October twenty-third,
A ne’er to be forgotten day,
Sae far I sprachled up the brae,
    I dinner’d wi’ a Lord.

I’ve been at drunken writers’ feasts,
Nay, been bitch-fou ‘mang godly priests,
    Wi’ rev’rence be it spoken!
I’ve even join’d the honour’d jorum,
When mighty Squireships of the quorum
    Their hydra drouth did sloken.

But wi’ a Lord-stand out my shin;
A Lord-a Peer-an Earl’s son,
    Up higher yet, my bonnet!
And sic a Lord!-lang Scotch ells twa,
Our Peerage he o’erlooks them a’,
    As I look o’er my sonnet.

But O for Hogarth’s magic pow’r!
To show Sir Bardie’s willyart glow’r,
    And how he star’d and stammer’d,
When govin’, as if led wi’ branks,
An’ stumpin’ on his ploughman shanks,
    He in the parlour hammer’d.

I sidling shelter’d in a nook,
An’ at his Lordship steal’t a look,
    Like some portentous omen;
Except good sense and social glee,
An’ (what surprised me) modesty,
    I marked nought uncommon.

I watch’d the symptoms o’ the Great,
The gentle pride, the lordly state,
    The arrogant assuming;
The fient a pride, nae pride had he,
Nor sauce, nor state that I could see,
    Mair than an honest ploughman.

Then from his lordship I shall learn
Henceforth to meet with unconcern
    One rank as weel’s another;
Nae honest worthy man need care
To meet with noble youthful Daer,
    For he but meets a brother.