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Impromptu Lines to Captain Riddell

by Robert Burns, 1789

  Your News and Review, sir.
  I've read through and through, sir,
With little admiring or blaming;
  The Papers are barren
  Of home-news or foreign,
No murders or rapes worth the naming.

  Our friends, the Reviewers,
  Those chippers and hewers,
Are judges of mortar and stone, sir;
  But of meet or unmeet,
  In a fabric complete,
I'll boldly pronounce they are none, sir;

  My goose-quill too rude is
  To tell all your goodness
Bestow'd on your servant, the Poet;
  Would to God I had one
  Like a beam of the sun,
And then all the world, sir, should know it!

Published in Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
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