To Capt Gordon on Being Asked...
written in 1793
To Capt Gordon on Being Asked... - meaning Summary
Playful Defense Against Exclusion
Burns addresses Captain Gordon to explain, with wit, why he did not receive an invitation from their friend Syme. He enumerates plausible reasons—being a lover of drink, a teller of bawdy jokes, a political heretic—but dismisses each with irony, insisting Syme is neither churl, nor prudish, nor censorious. The poem treats social exclusion as a comic puzzle rather than a serious quarrel, ending with a rueful note that being barred from Syme’s company denies him the convivial evening he would have shared with Gordon and Kenmure.
Read Complete AnalysesDost ask, dear Captain, why from Syme I have no invitation, When well he knows he has with him My first friends in the nation? Is it because I love to toast, And round the bottle hurl? No! there conjecture wild is lost, For Syme by God's no churl! Is't lest with bawdy jests I bore, As oft the matter of fact is? No! Syme the theory can't abhor Who loves so well the practice. Is it a fear I should avow Some heresy seditious? No! Syme (but this is entre nous) Is quite an old Tiresias. In vain Conjecture thus would flit Thro' mental clime and season: In short, dear Captain, Syme's a Wit Who asks of Wits a reason? Yet must I still the sort deplore That to my griefs add one more, In balking me the social hour With you and noble Kenmure.
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