Pinned to Mrs Riddell's carriage
If you rattle along like your Mistress's tongue, Your speed will outrival the dart: But, a fly for your load, you'll break down on the road, If your stuff be as rotten's her heart.
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About this work
This is a poem by Robert Burns. It was written in 1794 and is read here by John Ramage.
Selected for 06 August
The beginning of the stagecoach service in 1678 represented a vital innovation in public transport. Some of course, had carriages of their own. Burns is at his least gallant in these four lines. The Bard was not graceless enough to show the verses about his former friend TO his former fiend, though he sent them to several others and even sought to have then published in a newspaper. Not long before his death, reconciled with the rashly wronged Maria Riddell, he had the chance to apologise for this wounding epigram.
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