The Complete Works. Robert Burns

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      O Thou unknown, Almighty Cause

      Of all my hope and fear?

      In whose dread presence, ere an hour

      Perhaps I must appear!

      If I have wander’d in those paths

      Of life I ought to shun;

      As something, loudly, in my breast,

      Remonstrates I have done;

      Thou know’st that Thou hast formed me,

      With passions wild and strong;

      And list’ning to their witching voice

      Has often led me wrong.

      Where human weakness has come short,

      Or frailty stept aside,

      Do Thou, All-Good! for such thou art,

      In shades of darkness hide.

      Where with intention I have err’d,

      No other plea I have,

      But, Thou art good; and goodness still

      Delighteth to forgive.

      Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?

      How I so found it full of pleasing charms?

      Some drops of joy with draughts of ill between:

      Some gleams of sunshine ‘mid renewing storms:

      Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?

      Or Death’s unlovely, dreary, dark abode?

      For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms;

      I tremble to approach an angry God,

      And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.

      Fain would I say, “Forgive my foul offence!”

      Fain promise never more to disobey;

      But, should my Author health again dispense,

      Again I might desert fair virtue’s way:

      Again in folly’s path might go astray;

      Again exalt the brute and sink the man;

      Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray,

      Who act so counter heavenly mercy’s plan?

      Who sin so oft have mourn’d, yet to temptation ran?

      O Thou, great Governor of all below!

      If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee,

      Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,

      Or still the tumult of the raging sea:

      With that controlling pow’r assist ev’n me

      Those headlong furious passions to confine;

      For all unfit I feel my pow’rs to be,

      To rule their torrent in th’ allowed line;

      O, aid me with Thy help, Omnipotence Divine!

      When biting Boreas, fell and doure,

      Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;

      When Phœbus gies a short-liv’d glow’r

      Far south the lift,

      Dim-darkening through the flaky show’r,

      Or whirling drift:

      Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,

      Poor labour sweet in sleep was locked,

      While burns, wi’ snawy wreeths up-choked,

      Wild-eddying swirl.

      Or through the mining outlet bocked,

      Down headlong hurl.

      Listening, the doors an’ winnocks rattle,

      I thought me on the ourie cattle,

      Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle

      O’ winter war,

      And through the drift, deep-lairing sprattle

      Beneath a scar.

      Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,

      That, in the merry months o’ spring,

      Delighted me to hear thee sing,

      What comes o’ thee?

      Whare wilt thou cower thy chittering wing,

      An’ close thy e’e?

      Ev’n you on murd’ring errands toil’d,

      Lone from your savage homes exiled,

      The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled

      My heart forgets,

      While pitiless the tempest wild

      Sore on you beats.

      Now Phoebe, in her midnight reign,

      Dark muffled, viewed the dreary plain;

      Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train,

      Rose in my soul,

      When on my ear this plaintive strain

      Slow, solemn, stole:—

      “Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!

      And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost:

      Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!

      Not all your rage, as now united, shows

      More hard unkindness, unrelenting,

      Vengeful malice unrepenting,

      Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows;

      See stern oppression’s iron grip,

      Or mad ambition’s gory hand,

      Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip,

      Woe, want, and murder o’er a land!

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