Robert Burns (1759–1796). Poems and Songs.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 408. Commemoration of Rodney’s Victory |
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| INSTEAD of a Song, boy’s, I’ll give you a Toast; | |
| Here’s to the memory of those on the twelfth that we lost!— | |
| That we lost, did I say?—nay, by Heav’n, that we found; | |
| For their fame it will last while the world goes round. | |
| The next in succession I’ll give you’s THE KING! | 5 |
| Whoe’er would betray him, on high may he swing! | |
| And here’s the grand fabric, our free CONSTITUTION, | |
| As built on the base of our great Revolution! | |
| And longer with Politics not to be cramm’d, | |
| Be ANARCHY curs’d, and TYRANNY damn’d! | 10 |
| And who would to LIBERTY e’er prove disloyal, | |
| May his son be a hangman—and he his first trial! | |
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