The munelicht's like a lookin-glass,
The thistle's like mysel,
But whaur ye've gane, my bonnie lass,
Is mair than I can tell.

Were you a vision o mysel,
Transmutted by the mellow liquor?
Neist time I I glisk you in a glass,
I'se warrant I'll mak siccar.

A man's a clean contrairy sicht,
Turned this way in-ootside,
And, fegs, I feel like Dr. Jekyll
Tak'n guid tent o Mr. Hyde...

Gurly thistle - hic - you canna
Daunton me wi your shaggy mien,
I'm sair - hic - needin a shave,
That's plainly to be seen.

But what aboot it - hic - aboot it?
Mony a man's been that afore.
It's no a fact that in his lugs
A wund like this need roar!...

I hae forekent ye! O I hae forekent.
The years forecast your face afore they went.
A licht I canna thole is in the lift.
I bide in silence your slow-comin pace.
The ends o space are bricht: at lat - o swift!
While terror clings to me - an unkent face!

Ill-faith stirs in me as she comes at last,
The features lang foreknent ... are unforecast.
O it gans hard wi me, I am forespent.
Died dreams hae beaten me and a face unkent
And generations that I thocht unborn
Hail the strange Godess frae my hert's hert torn !...

Or does thou mak a thistle o me, wumman? But for thee
I were as happy as the munelicht, withoot care,
But thocht o thee - o thy contempt and ire -
Turns hauf the warld into the youky thistle there.

Feedin on the munelichht and transformin it
To this wanrestfu' growth that winna let me be.
The munelicht is the freedom that I'd hae
But for this cursed Conscience thou has set in me.

It is morality, the knowledge o Guid and Ill,
Fear, shame, pity, like a will and wilyart growth,
That kills aa else wi'in its reach and craves
Nae less at last than aa the warld to gie it scouth.

The need to wark, the need to think, the need to be,
And aathing that twists Life into a certain shape
And interferes wi prefect liberty -
These feed this Frankenstein that nae man can escape.

For ilka thing a man can be or think or dae
Aye leaves a million mair unbeen, unthocht, undane,
Till his puir warped preformance is,
To aa that micht hae been, a thistle to the mune.

It is Morality itsel - the mortal coil,
Mockin Perfection, Man afore the Throne o God
He yet has bigget himsel, Man torn in twa
And glorious in the lift and grisly on the sod!...

There's nocht sae sober as a man blin drunk.
I maun hae goat an unco bellyfu'
To jaw like this - and yet what I am sayin
Is aa the apter, aiblins, to be true.

This munelicht's fell like whisky noo I see't.
- Am I a thingum mebbe that is kept
Preserved in spirits in a muckle bottle
Lang centuries efter sin wi Jean I slept?

- Mounted on a hillside, wi the thistles
And bracken for verisimilitude.
Like a stuffed bird on metal like a brainch,
Or like a sea on a trump o rock-like wood?

Or am I juist a figure in a scene
O Scottish life A.D. one-nine-two-five?
The haill thing kelters like a theater claith
Till I micht fancy that I was alive !

I dinna ken and nae man ever can
I micht be in my ain bed efter aa.
The haill damned thin's a dream for ocht we ken,
- The Warld and Life and Daith, Heaven, hell anaa.

We maun juist tak things as we find them then,
And mak a kirk o mill o tham as we can,
- And yet I feel this muckle thistle staunin
Aatween me and the mune as pairt o a Plan.

It isna there - nor me - by accident.
We're brocht the gaither for a certian reason,
Ev'n gin it's naething mair than juist to gie
My jaded soul a necessary frisson.

I never saw afore a thistle quite
Sae intimatley, or at sic an oor.
There's something in the fickle licht that gi'es.
A different life to't and unco pooer.

Rootit on gressless peaks, whar its erect
And jaggy leafs, austerely cauld and dumb,
Haud the slow scaly serpent in respect,
The Gothic thistle, whar the insct's hum
Soons fer aff, lifts abune the rock it scorns
It's rigid virtue for the Heavens to see.
The too'ering boulders gaird it. And the bee
Maks honey frae the roses on its thorns.

But that's a Belgian refugee, of coorse.
This Freudian complex has somehoo slunken
Frae scotland's soul - the Scots aboulia -
Whilst aa its terra nullius is betrunken.

And aa the country roon aboot it noo
Lies clapt and shrunken syne like somebody wha
Has lang o seven devils been possesed;
Then when he turns a corner tines them aa.

Or like a body that has tint its soul,
Perched like a monkey on its heedless kist,
Or like a sea that peacfu' faas again
When frae its deeps an octopus is fished.