Epigram on Miss Fontenelle

Portrait of Robert Burns
Robert Burns 1759–1796
387Poems and Songs. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

SWEET naïveté of feature, Simple, wild, enchanting elf, Not to thee, but thanks to Nature, Thou art acting but thyself.

Wert thou awkward, stiff, affected, Spurning Nature, torturing art; Loves and Graces all rejected, Then indeed thou’d’st act a part.

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