---
title: "To Mr. Thomson"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "Mr. Thomson"
letter_number: 310
roman: "CCCX"
date: "January 1795"
source: "Project Gutenberg #18500 — The Complete Works of Robert Burns (ed. Allan Cunningham)"
editor: "Allan Cunningham"
source_url: "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18500/pg18500.txt"
canonical_url: "https://robert-burns.com/letters/310-to-thomson/"
---

# To Mr. Thomson

## Editor's note
In this brief and off-hand way Burns bestows on Thompson one of the finest songs ever dedicated to the cause of human freedom.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
I fear for my songs; however, a few may please, yet originality is a coy feature in composition, and in a multiplicity of efforts in the same style, disappears altogether. For these three thousand years, we poetic folks have been describing the spring, for instance; and as the spring continues the same, there must soon be a sameness in the imagery, &c., of these said rhyming folks.

A great critic (Aikin) on songs, says that love and wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following is on neither subject, and consequently is no song; but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted into rhyme.

Is there for honest poverty.[275]

I do not give you the foregoing song for your book, but merely by way of _vive la bagatelle_; for the piece is not really poetry. How will the following do for "Craigieburn-wood?"—

Sweet fa's the eve on Craigieburn.[276]

Farewell! God bless you!

R. B.

## Footnotes
275. Song CCLXIV.
276. Song CCXLV.

---

Source: [Project Gutenberg #18500 — The Complete Works of Robert Burns (ed. Allan Cunningham)](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18500/pg18500.txt), edited by Allan Cunningham  
Canonical HTML: https://robert-burns.com/letters/310-to-thomson/