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 bloodhounds from the slip,
Woe, want, and murder o’er a land!
Ev’n in the peaceful rural vale,
Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale
Burns
2 comments:
Thanks for posting this fine poem. I haven't read Burns (I'm intimidated by his use of Scots), but can see from this what an excellent poet he is.
And wholly applicable to Winter in Scotland and Another Israeli Attack on the Palestinians.
As this is the year of the Homecoming, I dug out my Burns book and while flicking through it I found the poem. What I forgot to make clear is that it is an extract, not the whole poem.
I also agree on the Scots language, but I find that when it is read aloud, it is more understandable. Scots, like many languages has not been completely codified, therefore there can be many spellings of the same word. Those of us who grew up reading the Broons and Oor Wullie will have a certain familiarity with the Scots of that era, but it looks quite different to that of Burns, which brings me back to the reading it out loud idea as that way both sound much more similar than their spelling might suggest.
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