Auld Brig

‘Conceited gowk! puff’d up wi’ windy pride! This mony a year I’ve stood the flood an’ tide; And tho’ wi’ crazy eild I’m sair forfairn, I’ll be a brig, when ye’re a shapeless cairn! As yet ye little ken about the matter, But twa-three winters will inform ye better. When heavy, dark, continued, a’-day rains, Wi’ deepening deluges o’erflow the plains; When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, Or stately Lugar’s mossy fountains boil, Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source, Arous’d by blust’ring winds an’ spotting thowes, In mony a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes; While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate, Sweeps dams, an’ mills, an’ brigs, a’ to the gate; And from Glenbuck, down to the Ratton-key, Auld Ayr is just one lengthen’d, tumbling sea; Then down ye’ll hurl, deil nor ye never rise! And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies! A lesson sadly teaching, to your cost, That architecture’s noble art is lost!’