Grown tired of mourning for my sins?
And brooding over merits?
The other night with bothered brow
I went amongst the spirits;
And I met one that I knew well:
`Oh, Scotty?s Ghost, is that you?
`And did you see the fearsome crowd
`At Robbie Burns?s statue? 

`They hurried up in hansom cabs,
`Tall-hatted and frock-coated;
`They trained it in from all the towns,
`The weird and hairy-throated;
`They spoke in some outlandish tongue,
`They cut some comic capers,
`And ilka man was wild to get
`His name in all the papers. 

`They showed no gleam of intellect,
`Those frauds who rushed before us;
`They knew one verse of ?Auld Lang Syne??
`The first one and the chorus:
`They clacked the clack o? Scotlan?s Bard,
`They glibly talked of ?Rabby;?
`But what if he had come to them
`Without a groat and shabby? 

`They drank and wept for Robbie?s sake,
`They stood and brayed like asses
`(The living bard?s a drunken rake,
`The dead one loved the lasses);
`If Robbie Burns were here, they?d sit
`As still as any mouse is;
`If Robbie Burns should come their way,
`They?d turn him out their houses. 

`Oh, weep for bonny Scotland?s bard!
`And praise the Scottish nation,
`Who made him spy and let him die
`Heart-broken in privation:
`Exciseman, so that he might live
`Through northern winters? rigours?
`Just as in southern lands they give
`The hard-up rhymer figures. 

`We need some songs of stinging fun
`To wake the States and light ?em;
`I wish a man like Robert Burns
`Were here to-day to write ?em!
`But still the mockery shall survive
`Till the Day o? Judgment crashes?
`The men we scorn when we?re alive
`With praise insult our ashes.? 

And Scotty?s ghost said: `Never mind
`The fleas that you inherit;
`The living bard can flick them off?
`They cannot hurt his spirit.
`The crawlers round the bardie?s name
`Shall crawl through all the ages;
`His work?s the living thing, and they
`Are fly-dirt on the pages.?