Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894). A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods. 1913.

VIII. The Counterblast—1886

MY bonny man, the warld, it’s true,

Was made for neither me nor you;

It’s just a place to warstle through,

As Job confessed o’t;

And aye the best that we’ll can do

Is mak the best o’t.

There’s rowth o’ wrang, I’m free to say:

The simmer brunt, the winter blae,

The face of earth a’ fyled wi’ clay

An’ dour wi’ chuckies,

An’ life a rough an’ land’art play

For country buckies.

An’ food’s anither name for clart;

An’ beasts an’ brambles bite an’ scart;

An’ what would WE be like, my heart!

If bared o’ claethin’?

—Aweel, I cannae mend your cart:

It’s that or naethin’.

A feck o’ folk frae first to last

Have through this queer experience passed;

Twa-three, I ken, just damn an’ blast

The hale transaction;

But twa-three ithers, east an’ wast,

Fand satisfaction.

Whaur braid the briery muirs expand,

A waefü’ an’ a weary land,

The bumblebees, a gowden band,

Are blithely hingin’;

An’ there the canty wanderer fand

The laverock singin’.

Trout in the burn grow great as herr’n;

The simple sheep can find their fair’n;

The wind blaws clean about the cairn

Wi’ caller air;

The muircock an’ the barefit bairn

Are happy there.

Sic-like the howes o’ life to some:

Green loans whaur they ne’er fash their thumb,

But mark the muckle winds that come,

Soopin’ an’ cool.

Or hear the powrin’ burnie drum

In the shilfa’s pool.

The evil wi’ the guid they tak;

They ca’ a gray thing gray, no black;

To a steigh brae, a stubborn back

Addressin’ daily;

An’ up the rude, unbieldy track

O’ life, gang gaily.

What you would like’s a palace ha’,

Or Sinday parlour dink an’ braw

Wi’ a’ things ordered in a raw

By denty leddies.

Weel, than, ye cannae hae’t: that’s a’

That to be said is.

An’ since at life ye’ve ta’en the grue,

An’ winnae blithely hirsle through,

Ye’ve fund the very thing to do—

That’s to drink speerit;

An’ shüne we’ll hear the last o’ you—

An’ blithe to hear it!

The shoon ye coft, the life ye lead,

Ithers will heir when aince ye’re deid;

They’ll heir your tasteless bite o’ breid,

An’ find it sappy;

They’ll to your dulefü’ house succeed,

An’ there be happy.

As whan a glum an’ fractious wean

Has sat an’ sullened by his lane

Till, wi’ a rowstin’ skelp, he’s taen

An’ shoo’d to bed—

The ither bairns a’ fa’ to play’n’,

As gleg’s a gled.