XXXVIII AY not of me that weakly I declined SAY The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, To play at home with paper like a child. But rather say: In the afternoon of time A strenuous family dusted from its hands The sand of granite, and beholding far Along the sounding coast its pyramids And tall memorials catch the dying sun, Smiled well content, and to this childish task Around the fire addressed its evening hours. ae ai a' TABLE OF COMMON SCOTTISH au aw } ea = = = VOWEL SOUNDS open A as in rare. AW as in law. open E as in mere, but this with exceptions, as heather = open E as in mere. open O as in more. heather, wean = wain, ou doubled O as in poor. OW = OW as in bower. u = doubled O as in poor. ui or ü before R rare. = (say roughly) open A as in ui or ü before any other consonant roughly) close I as in grin. pretty nearly what you please, much as in English. Heaven guide the reader through that labyrinth! But in Scots it dodges usually from the short I, as in grin, to the open E, as in mere. Find and blind, I may remark, are pronounced to rhyme with the preterite of grin. THE MAKER TO POSTERITY AR 'yont amang the years to be FAR an' a' we see, An' a' we luve, 's been dung ajee By time's rouch shouther, An' what was richt and wrang for me It's possible - it's hardly mair May find an' read me, an' be sair "What tongue does your auld bookie speak?" I wrote in Lallan, Dear to my heart as the peat reek, Few spak it then, an' noo there's nane. My puir auld sangs lie a' their lane, Their sense, that aince was braw an' plain, Like runes upon a standin' stane "But think not you the brae to speel; An' things are mebbe waur than weel "The hale concern (baith hens an' eggs, The tack o' mankind, near the dregs, "Your book, that in some braw new tongue, Whan the hale planet's guts are dung "An' you, sair gruppin' to a spar |