s a year
Will little gain me.

I hae a wife and twa wee laddies,
They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies;
Ye ken yoursel's my heart right proud is--
I needna vaunt,
But I'll sned besoms--thraw saugh woodies,
Before they want.

But to conclude my silly rhyme
(I'm scant o' verse, and scant o' time),
To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.'

This was nobly said; and the poet spoke from the heart.

Not content with being gauger, farmer, and poet, Burns took a lively
interest in everything affecting the welfare of the parish and the
well-being of its inhabitants. For this was no poet of the study,
holding himself aloof from the affairs of the world, and fearing the
contamination of his kind. Burns was alive all-round, and always acted
his part in the world as a husband and father; as a citizen and a man.
He made himself the poet of humanity, because he himself was so
intensely human, and joyed and sorrowed with his fellows. At this time
he established a library in Dunscore, and himself undertook the whole
management,--drawing out rules, purchasing books, acting for a time as
secretary, treasurer, and committee all in one. Among the volumes he
ordered were several of his old favourites, _The Spectator_, _The Man of
Feeling_, and _The Lounger_; and we know that there was on the shelves
even a folio Hebrew Concordance.

A favourite walk of the poet's while he stayed here was along Nithside,
where he often wandered to take a 'gloamin' shot at the Muses.' Here,
after a fall of rain, Cunningham records, the poet loved to walk,
listening to the roar of the river, or watching it bursting impetuously
from the groves of Friar's Carse. 'Thither he walked in his sterner
moods, when the world and its ways touched his spirit; and the elder
peasants of the vale still show the point at which he used to pause and
look on the red and agitated stream.'

In spite of his multifarious duties, he was now more than ever
determined to make his name as a poet. To Dr. Moore he wrote (4th
January 1789): 'The character and employment of a poet were formerly my
pleasure, but now my pride.... Poesy I am determined to prosecute with
all my vigour. Nature has given very few, if any, of the profession the
talents of shining in every species of composition. I shall try (for
unt