Fragment Inscribed To The Right Hon. C.j. Fox. Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCC DD EEFFAAGH IICC IIJJKJII LLMM NNOOPP IIIIQRCCKKKJ| How wisdom and folly meet mix and unite | A |
| How virtue and vice blend their black and their white | A |
| How genius th' illustrious father of fiction | B |
| Confounds rule and law reconciles contradiction | B |
| I sing if these mortals the critics should bustle | C |
| I care not not I let the critics go whistle | C |
| - | |
| But now for a patron whose name and whose glory | D |
| At once may illustrate and honour my story | D |
| - | |
| Thou first of our orators first of our wits | E |
| Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits | E |
| With knowledge so vast and with judgment so strong | F |
| No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong | F |
| With passions so potent and fancies so bright | A |
| No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite right | A |
| A sorry poor misbegot son of the muses | G |
| For using thy name offers fifty excuses | H |
| - | |
| Good L d what is man for as simple he looks | I |
| Do but try to develope his hooks and his crooks | I |
| With his depths and his shallows his good and his evil | C |
| All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil | C |
| - | |
| On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours | I |
| That like th' old Hebrew walking switch eats up its neighbours | I |
| Mankind are his show box a friend would you know him | J |
| Pull the string ruling passion the picture will show him | J |
| What pity in rearing so beauteous a system | K |
| One trifling particular truth should have miss'd him | J |
| For spite of his fine theoretic positions | I |
| Mankind is a science defies definitions | I |
| - | |
| Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe | L |
| And think human nature they truly describe | L |
| Have you found this or t'other there's more in the wind | M |
| As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find | M |
| - | |
| But such is the flaw or the depth of the plan | N |
| In the make of that wonderful creature call'd man | N |
| No two virtues whatever relation they claim | O |
| Nor even two different shades of the same | O |
| Though like as was ever twin brother to brother | P |
| Possessing the one shall imply you've the other | P |
| - | |
| But truce with abstraction and truce with a muse | I |
| Whose rhymes you'll perhaps Sir ne'er deign to peruse | I |
| Will you leave your justings your jars and your quarrels | I |
| Contending with Billy for proud nodding laurels | I |
| My much honour'd Patron believe your poor poet | Q |
| Your courage much more than your prudence you show it | R |
| In vain with Squire Billy for laurels you struggle | C |
| He'll have them by fair trade if not he will smuggle | C |
| Not cabinets even of kings would conceal 'em | K |
| He'd up the back stairs and by G he would steal 'em | K |
| Then feats like Squire Billy's you ne'er can achieve 'em | K |
| It is not outdo him the task is out thieve him | J |
Robert Burns
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