ter, and wild-driving snaw
Alane can delight me--now Nannie's awa.

CLARINDA

Clarinda, mistress of my soul,
The measured time is run!
The wretch beneath the dreary pole
So marks his latest sun.

To what dark cave of frozen night
Shall poor Sylvander hie,
Depriv'd of thee, his life and light,
The sun of all his joy?

We part--but by these precious drops
That fill thy lovely eyes!
No other light shall guide my steps
Till thy bright beams arise.

She, the fair sun of all her sex,
Has blest my glorious day;
And shall a glimmering planet fix
My worship to its ray?

4. Ellisland

In the spring of 1788 when Burns married Jean Armour, he took two
other steps of the first importance for his future career. The
Edinburgh period had come and gone, and all that his intercourse with
his influential friends had brought him was the four or five hundred
pounds of profit from his poems and an opportunity to enter the excise
service. With part of the money he relieved his brother Gilbert from
pressing obligations at Mossgiel by the loan of one hundred and eighty
pounds, and with the rest leased the farm of Ellisland on the bank of
the Nith, five or six miles above Dumfries. But before taking up the
farm he devoted six weeks or so to tuition in the duties of an
exciseman, so that he had this occupation to fall back on in case of
another farming failure. During the summer he superintended the
building of the farm-house, and in December Jean joined her husband.
His satisfaction in his domestic situation is characteristically
expressed in a song composed about this time.

I HAE A WIFE

I hae a wife o' my ain,
I'll partake wi' naebody;
I'll tak cuckold frae nane,
I'll gie cuckold to naebody.

I hae a penny to spend,
There--thanks to naebody;
I hae naething to lend,
I'll borrow frae naebody.

I am naebody's lord,
I'll be slave to naebody;
I hae a guid braid sword,
I'll tak dunts frae naebody. [blows]

I'll be merry and free,
I'll be sad for naebody;
Naebody cares for me,
I care for naebody.

Early in his residence at Ellisland he formed a close relation with a
neighboring proprietor, Colonel Robert Riddel. For him he copied into
two volumes a large part of what he considered the best of his
unpublished verse and prose, thus formi