Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

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604	OUR FAMILIAR SONGS.


A king can mak' a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might, Gude faith, he maunna fa' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities and a' that, The pith o' sense, the pride o' worth, Are higher ranks than a' that.		Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May bear the gree and a' that. For a' that, and a' that, It's comin' yet for a' that, When man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that.
THERE'S A GOOD TIME COMING. John Black, long and widely known as editor of the London Morning Chronicle, writing to Charles Mackay, says: " I think I have heard during the last half-dozen years your song of ' There's a good time coming,' oftener sung by the people, than I have ever heard any one song sung during the course of my life." At the close of Mackay's first visit to America, Oliver Wendell Holmes addressed to him the exquisite poem beginning: " Brave singer of the coming time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, Good bye! Good bye! — Our hearts and hands, Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, Cry, God be with him, till he stands His feet among the English daisies 1"