Page:The Book of Scottish Song.djvu/74

56 Since thoughts of you do banish grief,

When I'm from you removed;

And if in them I find relief,

When with sad cares I'm moved,

How doth your presence me affect

With ecstasies divine,

Especially when I reflect

On old long syne.

Since thou hast robb'd me of my heart,

By those resistless powers

Which Madam Nature doth impart

To those fair eyes of yours,

With honour it doth not consist

To hold a slave in pyne;

Pray let your rigour, then, desist,

For old long syne.

'Tis not my freedom I do crave,

By deprecating pains;

Sure, liberty he would not have

Who glories in his chains:

But this I wish—the gods would move

That noble soul of thine

To pity, if thou canst not love,

For old long syne.

[ by, and published in the first vol. of his Tea-Table Miscellany, 1724.]

[ following is the version of "Auld Lang Syne" which communicated to Johnson's Museum, and which has since become so universal a favourite. In the Museum it is marked with a Z, signifying that it is an old song with additions and alterations. In his correspondence both with Mrs. Dunlop and Mr. Thomson, Burns says that he took the song down from the singing of an old man—and we are inclined to believe this partially. The first, fourth, and fifth verses seem fragments of an old ditty: the second and third verses betray the tenderness and sentiment of the poet himself. Had Burns been the sole author of the song, we cannot see how he would have spoken with such raptures regarding it. "Light be the turf," he says, "on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment!"—The air to which "Auld Lang Syne" is now generally sung is not the original one, which Burns pronounced to be mediocre, but