Poem by Robert Burns

The Joyful Widower

I MARRIED with a scolding wife
  The fourteenth of November;
She made me weary of my life,
  By one unruly member.
Long did I bear the heavy yoke,
  And many griefs attended;
But, to my comfort be it spoke,
  Now, now her life is ended.

We lived full one-and-twenty years
  A man and wife together;
At length from me her course she steer’d.
  And gone I know not whither:
Would I could guess! I do profess,
  I speak, and do not flatter,
Of all the women in the world,
  I never would come at her.

Her body is bestowed well,
  A handsome grave does hide her;
But sure her soul is not in hell,
  The deil would ne’er abide her.
I rather think she is aloft,
  And imitating thunder;
For why,-methinks I hear her voice
  Tearing the clouds asunder.

1. It Is Na, Jean, Thy Bonnie Face
2. Farewell, Thou Stream
3. Sleep’st Thou, or Wak’st Thou
4. Eppie M’Nab
5. Mark Yonder Pomp

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