Then cannie, in some cozie place, [quietly]
They close the day.

And others, like your humble servan',
Poor wights! nae rules nor roads observin',
To right or left eternal swervin',
They zig-zag on;
Till, curst with age, obscure an' starvin',
They aften groan.

* * * * *

O ye douce folk that live by rule,
Grave, tideless-blooded, calm an' cool,
Compar'd wi' you--O fool! fool! fool!
How much unlike!
Your hearts are just a standing pool,
Your lives a dyke! [stone wall]

Nothing is more characteristic of the poet than this attitude toward
prudence--this mixture of Intellectual respect with emotional
contempt. He admits freely that restraint and calculation pay, but
impulse makes life so much more interesting!

The _Epistle to Davie, a Brother Poet_, deserves to be quoted in
full. It contains the final phrasing of the central point of Burns's
ethics, the Scottish rustic's version of that philosophy of
benevolence with which Shaftesbury sought to warm the chill of
eighteenth-century thought: