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But pleasures are like poppies spread,You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;Or like the snow falls in the river,A moment white———then melts for ever;Or like the Borealis race,That flit ere you can point their place;Or like the rainbow's lovely formEvanishing amid the storm.—Nae man can tether time or tide;The hour approaches Tam maun ride;That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane,That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;And sic a night he tacks the road in,As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in.
The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last;The rattling show'rs rose on the blast;The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd;Lond, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd:That night, a child might understand,The deil had business on his hand.
Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg,A better never lifted leg,Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire,Despising wind, and rain, and fire;Whiles haudin fast his gude blue bonnet;Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet;Whiles glow'ring round wi' prudent cares;Lest bogles catch him unawares:Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.—
By this time he was cross the ford,Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd;And past the birks and meikle stane,Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck bane;And thro' the whins, and by the cairn,Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn;And near the thorn, aboon the well,Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.—
