On Turning One Down with the Plough in April, 1786

By Robert Burns

Wee, modest, crimson-tippÉd flower,
Thou’s met me in an evil hour,
For I maun8-1 crush amang the stoure8-2
Thy slender stem;
To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonny gem.

Alas! it’s no thy neibor sweet,
The bonny lark, companion meet,
Bending thee’ mang the dewy weet,
Wi’ spreckled8-3 breast,
When upward springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High sheltering woods and wa’s maun shield.
But thou beneath the random bield9-4
O’ clod or stane,
Adorns the histie9-5 stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet floweret of the rural shade!
By love’s simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low i’ the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard,
On life’s rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskilful he to note the card
Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard
And whelm him o’er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven
To misery’s brink,
Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
He, ruined, sink!

Even thou who mourn’st the daisy’s fate,
That fate is thine,—no distant date:
Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight,
Shall be thy doom!