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Home  »  The Poems and Songs  »  245 . Versicles on Sign-Posts

Robert Burns (1759–1796). Poems and Songs.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

245 . Versicles on Sign-Posts

CURS’D be the man, the poorest wretch in life,

The crouching vassal to a tyrant wife!

Who has no will but by her high permission,

Who has not sixpence but in her possession;

Who must to he, his dear friend’s secrets tell,

Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell.

Were such the wife had fallen to my part,

I’d break her spirit or I’d break her heart;

I’d charm her with the magic of a switch,

I’d kiss her maids, and kick the perverse b——h.