Robert Burns

Prologue, Spoken by Mr. Woods, on His Benefit-Night, Monday, April 16. 1787

WHEN by a generous public’s kind acclaim,
That dearest meed is granted-honest fame;
When here your favour is the actor’s lot,
Nor even the man in private life forgot;
What breast so dead to heav’nly virtue’s glow,
But heaves impassion’d with the grateful throe?
  Poor is the task to please a barb’rous throng,
It needs no Siddons’ power in Southern’s song:
But here an ancient nation, fam’d afar
For genius, learning high, as great in war-
Hail, Caledonia! name for ever dear!
Before whose sons I’m honour’d to appear!
Where every science, every nobler art,
That can inform the mind, or mend the heart,
Is known; as grateful nations oft have found,
Far as the rude barbarian marks the bound.
Philosophy, no idle, pedant dream,
Here holds her search, by heaven-taught Reason’s beam;
Here History paints with elegance and force,
The tide of Empire’s fluctuating course;
Here Douglas forms wild Shakespeare into plan,
And Harley rouses all the god in man.
When well-form’d taste and sparkling wit unite,
With manly love, or female beauty bright
(Beauty, where faultless symmetry and grace
Can only charm us in the second place)-
Witness my heart, how oft with panting fear,
As on this night, I’ve met these judges here!
But still the hope Experience taught to live,
Equal to judge-you’re candid to forgive.
No hundred-headed Riot here we meet,
With decency and law beneath his feet,
Nor Insolence assumes fair Freedom’s name;
Like Caledonians, you applaud or blame.
  O Thou, dread Power! whose empire-giving hand
Has oft been stretch’d to shield the honour’d land,
Strong may she glow with all her ancient fire;
May every son be worthy of his sire;
Firm may she rise with generous disdain
At Tyranny’s, or direr Pleasure’s chain;
Still self-dependent in her native shore,
Bold may she brave grim Danger’s loudest roar,
Till Fate the curtain drop on worlds to be no more.