Sir Reynard daily heard debates
     Of Princes’, Kings’, and Nations’ fates,
     With many rueful, bloody stories
     Of Tyrants, Jacobites, and Tories: 
     From liberty how angels fell,
     That now are galley-slaves in hell;
     How Nimrod first the trade began
     Of binding Slavery’s chains on Man;
     How fell Semiramis—­God damn her! 
     Did first, with sacrilegious hammer,
     (All ills till then were trivial matters)
     For Man dethron’d forge hen-peck fetters;

     How Xerxes, that abandoned Tory,
     Thought cutting throats was reaping glory,
     Until the stubborn Whigs of Sparta
     Taught him great Nature’s Magna Charta;
     How mighty Rome her fiat hurl’d
     Resistless o’er a bowing world,
     And, kinder than they did desire,
     Polish’d mankind with sword and fire;
     With much, too tedious to relate,
     Of ancient and of modern date,
     But ending still, how Billy Pitt
     (Unlucky boy!) with wicked wit,
     Has gagg’d old Britain, drain’d her coffer,
     As butchers bind and bleed a heifer,

     Thus wily Reynard by degrees,
     In kennel listening at his ease,
     Suck’d in a mighty stock of knowledge,
     As much as some folks at a College;
     Knew Britain’s rights and constitution,
     Her aggrandisement, diminution,
     How fortune wrought us good from evil;
     Let no man, then, despise the Devil,
     As who should say, ‘I never can need him,’
     Since we to scoundrels owe our freedom.

Poem On Pastoral Poetry

     Hail, Poesie! thou Nymph reserv’d! 
     In chase o’ thee, what crowds hae swerv’d
     Frae common sense, or sunk enerv’d
     ‘Mang heaps o’ clavers: 
     And och! o’er aft thy joes hae starv’d,
     ‘Mid a’ thy favours!

     Say, Lassie, why, thy train amang,
     While loud the trump’s heroic clang,
     And sock or buskin skelp alang
     To death or marriage;
     Scarce ane has tried the shepherd—­sang
     But wi’ miscarriage?

     In Homer’s craft Jock Milton thrives;
     Eschylus’ pen Will Shakespeare drives;
     Wee Pope, the knurlin’, till him rives
     Horatian fame;
     In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives
     Even Sappho’s flame.

     But thee, Theocritus, wha matches? 
     They’re no herd’s ballats, Maro’s catches;
     Squire Pope but busks his skinklin’ patches
     O’ heathen tatters: 
     I pass by hunders, nameless wretches,
     That ape their betters.

     In this braw age o’ wit and lear,
     Will nane the Shepherd’s whistle mair
     Blaw sweetly in its native air,
     And rural grace;
     And, wi’ the far-fam’d Grecian, share
     A rival place?