Elegy on the Year 1788
written in 1789
Elegy on the Year 1788 - form Summary
An Elegy for a Year
This short elegy addresses the year 1788 as if it were a person, mourning public and private losses with a tart, comic voice. Burns catalogs political quarrels and changes (Pitt and Fox), imperial troubles, local hardships (dried Embro' wells), and small domestic bereavements, blending national and intimate scales. The poem frames 1788’s turmoil with ironic affection and then speaks directly to 1789 — a youthful successor urged to learn from its predecessor and do no worse. The elegiac form is used less for solemn grief than for social commentary and wry admonition.
Read Complete AnalysesFor Lords or kings I dinna mourn, E'en let them die - for that they're born! But oh! prodigious to reflect, A Towmont, Sirs, is gane to wreck! O Eighty-eight, in thy sma' space What dire events ha'e taken place! Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us! In what a pickle thou has left us! The Spanish empire's tint a head, And my auld teethless Bawtie's dead; The toolzie's teugh 'tween Pitt and Fox, An' our gudewife's wee birdy cocks; The tane is game, a bluidy devil, But to the hen-birds unco civil; The tither's dour, has nae sic breedin', But better stuff ne'er claw'd a middin. Ye ministers, come mount the pupit, An' cry till ye be haerse an' rupit; For Eighty-eight he wished you weel, An' gied ye a' baith gear an' meal; E'en mony a plack, an' mony a peck, Ye ken yoursels, for little feck! Ye bonny lasses, dight your e'en, For some o' you hae tint a frien'; In Eighty-eight, ye ken, was taen, What ye'll ne'er hae to gi'e again. Observe the very nowt an' sheep, How dowff an' dowie now they creep; Nay, even the yirth itsel' does cry, For Embro' wells are grutten dry. O Eighty-nine, thou's but a bairn, An' no owre auld, I hope, to learn! Thou beardless boy, I pray tak care, Thou now hast got thy Daddy's chair, Nae handcuff'd, mizl'd, hap-shackl'd Regent, But, like himsel', a full free agent, Be sure ye follow out the plan Nae waur than he did, honest man! As muckle better as you can.
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