ORIGINAL POETRY.

Messrs. Editors,

Anacreon has sung his barbiton, and Horace his lyre. Every modem magazine has its sonnets to guitars, Aeolian harps, etc. That you may not be excepted from the number, I send you the following address

         TO A HAND ORGAN. 


Out on your noise, ye blastit wight, 

That breaks my slumbers ilka night, 

Grindin your tunes for very spite
                     Through thick and thin ! 

Ye’d make a Christian swear outright
                     To hear your din.

Sure ye must be some smoutie ghost 

Let loose frae hell’s infernal coast;
Ane of auld Clootie’s muckle host,
                     An’ yelpin choir, 

Sic as he keeps to skelp and roast
                     Wi’ brunstane fire.

Did ye but ken the pangs I feel 

To lay and list your cursed squeel, 

Ye wad na grind anither peal
                     Sae harsh and deep; 

But gang in pitie to the deil,
                     An’ let me sleep.

There is na musick in your din, 

Nay, sic a discord ye begin, 

Ye jar the very windows in
                     Wi’ tortured tune ;

If murder be a deadly sin,
                     Ye’ll rue it soon.

To please the deil auld Orpheus played, 

And for his wife i’ fiddlin paid.
On dolphin’s tail Arion rade
                     The billows stripin. 

Baith drew the oaks frae hill to glade
                     By dint o’ pipin.

But ye wad do things greater still; 

Your noise wad drown a water mill, 

Ye’d scare the woods and split the hill, 

                     Sae great your power.
And ony mortal wight ye’d kill 

                     In half an hour.

If pilgrimage to holy shrine
Wad stap your unco gratin whine,
Or souse ye in the Red Sea’s brine
                     For aye to sleep ; 

Right soon I’d make the penance mine,
                     And think it cheap.

But if ye heed nor prayer nor spell, 

And winna stap that croakin yell 

For a’ poor bard can sing or tell,
                     Or ony boon;

I’ll try if brickbats can avail
                     To change your tune.

The Monthly Anthology and Boston
Review, August 1810