This poem, written by Robert Burns’ son, in 1850, was published by the Montreal Gazette the next year, two days after Burn’s anniversary. It is not a very good poem, but it was published because of the father, not the content. On the whole, of the poems published in the papers in the period, it is of the same quality.
Montreal Gazette,
27 January 1851, page 1
Pretty Meg, My Dearie
By Robert Burns, elder son of the Bard
As I good up the side o’ Nith,
Ae simmer morning early,
Wi’ gowden locks up dewy lees,
The broom was waving fairly;
Alert, unseen in cloudless sky,
The lark was singing clearly,
When wadin’ through the broom I spied
My pretty Meg, my dearie;
Like dawin’ light free stormy night,
To sailor sad and weary,
Sae sweet to me the glint to see,
O’ Pretty Meg, my dearie.
Her lips were like a half-seen road,
Whom day is breaking poly;
Her een, beneath her snowy brow,
Like raindrops frae a lily-
Like twa young bluebells fill’d with dew,
They glann’d baith bright and clearly;
Aboon them shone o’ bonnie brown,
The locks o’ Meg, my dearie,
Of a’ the flowers in sunny bowers,
That bloom’d that morn saie cheerie,
The fairest flower that happy hour,
Was pretty Meg, my dearie!
I took her by the sum’a white hand,
My heart sprang in my bosom-
Upon her face and maiden grace,
Like sunshine n a blossom.
How lovely seem’d the morning hymn,
Of like birdie near me;
But sweater far the angel voice,
O’ pretty Meg, my dearie.
While summer fight shall bless my sight,
Or bonnie broom shall cheer me;
I’ll never forget the morn I met
My pretty Meg, my dearie!
Dumfries, 1850.
Tags: bad victorian poetry, Robert Burns, Scotland
