Robert Burns: 'Winter: A Dirge'

''Winter Light'' (oil on canvas), by Susan Charles, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.

The wintry west extends his blast,
  And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
  The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
  And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
  And pass the heartless day.

“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”
  The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me more dear
  Than all the pride of May:
The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,
  My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
  Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
  These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest; they must be best,
  Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want—O do Thou grant
  This one request of mine!—
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
  Assist me to resign.

The Scots: Reality or romance?

For Scotland to secede from the United Kingdom would be the triumph of romance over political and economic reality. Scotland is a windy, wet and cold place. The weather will feel a lot worse if they spin themselves off.  They think they'll be able to build a bigger, better welfare state on the proceeds of North Sea oil and gas. But that stuff will run out.

And why stop there? ''Freedom'' for Wales, the Isle of Man and Cornwall! Liberate the  whole Celtic periphery! Detach Brittany from France and Galicia from Spain, too! (The Irish Republic is quite all right.)

Vladimir Putin must be happy at the prospect of these little regions in Western Europe splitting off and thus inevitably weakening the Western Alliance.

I'm a quarter Scottish ancestry myself (McKay and Simpson among the family names). There were some productive people in the crowd, including the physician James Young Simpson, but also a large quota of  crazies and alcoholics  (or, to be more precise, crazies self-medicating with booze ).

They used to recite Robert Burns ad nauseam, though I always liked his line, translated from the weird Scottish dialect:

"Oh would some power the gift give us, To see ourselves as others see us.''

-- Robert Whitcomb

Et Vive le Quebec libre!