Robert Burns

Verses Written under the Portrait of Fergusson

The poet, in a copy of that author’s works presented 
to a young lady in Edinburgh, March 19, 1787.

CURSE on ungrateful man, that can be pleas’d,
And yet can starve the author of the pleasure!
O thou, my elder brother in misfortune,
By far my elder brother in the Muses,
With tears I pity thy unhappy fate!
Why is the Bard unpitied by the world,
Yet has so keen a relish of its pleasures?