Let's drink to our next meeting, lads,
Nor think on what's atwixt;
They're fools wha spoil the present hour
By thinking on the next.
...
It's dowie in the hint o' hairst,
At the wa-gang o' the swallow,
When the wind grows cauld, and the burns grow bauld,
...
The midnight hour is clinking, lads,
An' the douce an' the decent are winking, lads;
Sae I tell ye again,
Be't weel or ill ta'en,
...
'WHAREFORE sou'd ye talk o' love,
Unless it be to pain us?
Wharefore sou'd ye talk o' love
Whan ye say the sea maun twain us?'
...
We lads that live up in the nobs,
Tho' our manners might yet bear a rubbing,
We're handy at neat little jobs
Such as chopping and hewing and grubbing.
...
Hew Ainslie was a Scottish poet. Biography He was born in the parish of Dailly, in Ayrshire, 5 April 1792. After a fair education, he became in turn a clerk in Glasgow, a landscape gardener in his native district, and a clerk in the Register House, Edinburgh. For a short time he was amanuensis to Dugald Stewart. In 1822, being then ten years married to his cousin, Ainslie emigrated to America, where he continued to live with varied fortune for the rest of his days, paying a short visit to Scotland in 1864. He was attracted, on going to the New World, by Robert Owen's social system at New Harmony, Indiana; but after a short trial he connected himself with a firm of brewers, and his name is associated with the establishment of various breweries, mills, and factories in the Western States. He died at Louisville, 11 March 1878. Ainslie's best known book originated, by its title, what is now an accepted descriptive name for the part of Scotland associated with Burns. It is ‘A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns’ (1820), and consists of a narrative interspersed with sprightly lyrics. A collection of the poet's Scottish songs and ballads (of which the most popular is ‘The Rover of Loch Ryan’) appeared in New York in 1855. Ainslie is one of the group of minor Scottish singers represented in ‘Whistle Binkie’ (Glasgow, 1853).)
Let's Drink To Our Next Meeting
Let's drink to our next meeting, lads,
Nor think on what's atwixt;
They're fools wha spoil the present hour
By thinking on the next.
Chorus
Then here's to Meg o' Morningside,
An Kate o' Kittlemark;
The taen she drank her hose and shoon,
The tither pawned her sark.
A load o' wealth, an' wardly pelf,
They say is sair to bear;
Sae he's a gowk would scrape an' howk
To make his burden mair
Chorus
Gif Care looks black the morn, lads,
As he's come doon the lum,
Let's ease our hearts by swearing, lads,
We never bade him come.
Chorus
Then here's to our next meeting, lads,
Ne'er think on what's atwixt;
They're fools who spoil the present hour
By thinking on the next.
Chorus