Friday Poem corner - as we've not had it for a while...

[SupremeSpod]

RR was an accountant, as I recall. I also recall reading in the papers back in about 2006 something about an accountant and a Thai (or foreign?) bride. So it could have been something to do with him. I don't remember the details though.

Wasn't he based in Auld Reekie?

[AlfredJPruffock]

Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest climates under heaven.

She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills.


The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring.

The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate.

.....Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh Picturesque Notes, 1879

[shaunbhoy]

Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest climates under heaven.

She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills.


The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring.

The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate.

.....Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh Picturesque Notes, 1879

Christ, he was a real breath of fresh air, wasn't he?

[Gibbon]

A lizard ran out on a rock and looked up, listening
no doubt to the sounding of the spheres.
And what a dandy fellow! the right toss of a chin for you
and swirl of a tail!

If men were as much men as lizards are lizards
they’d be worth looking at.

D.H. Lawrence

[SupremeSpod]

Ye sons of Auld Killie, assembled by Willie,
To follow the noble vocation;
Your thrifty old mother has scarce such another
To sit in that honoured station.
I've little to say, but only to pray,
As praying's the ton of your fashion;
A prayer from the muse you well may excuse,
`Tis seldom her favorite passion.

Ye powers who preside o'er the wind and the tide,
Who marked each element's border,
Who formed this frame with beneficent aim
Whose sovereign statute is order,
Within this dear mansion may wayward contention,
Or withered Envy ne'er enter,
May secrecy round be the mystical bound
And brotherly love be the center.


Robert Burns

[AlfredJPruffock]

Dear SupremeSpod

I'll gie ye some advice,
You'll tak it no uncivil:

You shouldna paint at Angels mair,
But try and paint the Devil.

To paint an Angel's little wark,
Wi' Nick, there's little danger:

You'll easy draw a lang-kent face,
But no sae weel a stranger.

R. B.