The chiels that are christened to riches an' grandeur
Ken nought o' the pleasure that hard labour brings;
What in idleness comes they in idleness squander,
While the labouring man toils a' the lang day and sings!
Then why should we envy the great an' the noble,
The thocht is a kingdom—it's ours what we hae!
A boast that repays us for sair wark an' trouble,
'I've earned it!' is mair than a monarch can say.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, July 02, 2014
I've Earned It
Robert Gilfillan (1798-1850), "Young Willie, the Ploughman," 3rd stanza, Poems and Songs, 4th ed. (Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, 1851), p. 69: