The heart aye's the part aye
That makes us right or wrang.

The mood of this poem is Burns's middle mood, lying between the black
melancholy of his poems of despair and remorse and the exhilaration of
his more exalted bacchanalian and love songs--the mood, we may infer,
of his normal working life. We may again observe the correspondence
between the change of dialect and change of tone in stanzas nine and
ten, the increase of artificiality coming with his literary English
and culminating in the unspeakable "tenebrific scene." His humor
returns with his Scots in the last verse.


EPISTLE TO DAVIE, A BROTHER POET

While winds frae aff Ben Lomond blaw,
And bar the doors wi' driving snaw,
And hing us owre the ingle, [hang, fire]
I set me down to pass the time,
And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme,
In hamely westlin jingle. [west-country]
While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
Ben to the chimla lug, [In, chimney-corner]
I grudge a wee the great-folk's gift,
That live sae bien an' snug; [comfortable]
I tent less, and want less [value]
Their roomy fire-side;
But hanker and canker
To see their cursèd pride.