199 While Summer, with a matron grace, Retreats to Dryburgh's cooling shade, Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace The progress of the spiky blade : While Autumn, benefactor kind, By Tweed erects his agèd head, And sees, with self-approving mind, Each creature on his bounty fed: While maniac Winter rages o'er The hills whence classic Yarrow flows, Rousing the turbid torrent's roar, Or sweeping, wild, a waste of snows: So long, sweet Poet of the year, Shall bloom that wreath thou well hast won: While Scotia, with exulting tear, Proclaims that Thomson was her son. A VISION. [The ruins here celebrated were those of Lincluden Abbey, during the later years of Burns a favourite haunt of his near Dumfries. Situated upon an elevated plateau in the angle formed by the confluence of the Cluden and the Nith, these picturesque débris of a noble building command a superb sweep of landscape. There the Poet often used to wander rapt in meditation, mostly in solitude, but sometimes accompanied by his eldest son and namesake, then a child of seven. The ballad, adapted to the tune of "Cumnock Psalms," had appended to each stanza, by way of chorus, these words: A lassie all alone was making her moan, himself could hardly have desired a more striking specimen of Bathos, or the Art of Sinking, than that which the concluding stanza affords.] As I stood by yon roofless tower, Where the wa'-flower scents the dewy air, Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower, And tells the midnight moon her care. The winds were laid, the air was still, The stars they shot alang the sky; The fox was howling on the hill, And the distant echoing glens reply. The stream, adown its hazelly path, Was rushing by the ruined wa's, Hasting to join the sweeping Nith, Whase distant roaring swells and fa's. The cauld blue north was streaming forth Her lights, wi' hissing eerie din, Athort the lift they start and shift, Like fortune's favours, tint as win. By heedless chance I turned mine eyes, And, by the moonbeam, shook to see A stern and stalwart ghaist arise, Attired as minstrels wont to be. Had I a statue been o' stane, His darin' look had daunted me; And on his bonnet graved was plain, The sacred posie-Libertie ! And frae his harp sic strains did flow, Might roused the slumbering dead to hear; In the bluidy wars they fa', and our honor's gane But oh, it was a tale of woe, and a', And broken-hearted we maun dee. Lord Jeffrey thought so highly of this fragmentary poem, "A Vision," that he declared that if Burns had never written anything else, he regarded it as entitling him to the remembrance of posterity. Nevertheless, Martinus Scriblerus As ever met a Briton's ear! He sang wi' joy the former day, He weeping wailed his latter times; But what he said it was nae play, I winna ventur't in my rhymes. TO JOHN MAXWELL, OF TERRAUGHTY, ON HIS BIRTH DAY. [The Laird of Terraughty, John Maxwell by name, was lineally descended from Lord Herries, who fought for Mary, Queen of Scots, at Langside. At the time when he was poetically apostrophized thus by the Ayrshire Poet, Mr. Maxwell was already so far a Veteran Chief, that he was even then seventy-one years of age. And though he failed to realize the prediction of Burns, that he would have a tack o' seven times seven additional, which would have extended his years to one hundred and twenty, he yet attained the grand old age of ninetyfour.] HEALTH to the Maxwells' veteran chief! Health, aye unsoured by care or grief : Inspired, I turned Fate's sybil leaf This natal morn; I see thy life is stuff o' prief, Scarce quite half worn. This day thou metes threescore eleven, If envious buckies view wi' sorrow morrow, May Desolation's lang-teethed harrow, Nine miles an hour, Rake them, like Sodom and Gomorrah, In brunstane stoure! But for thy friends, and they are mony, Baith honest men and lasses bonnie, May couthie Fortune, kind and canny, In social glee, Wi' mornings blithe and evenings funny, Bless them and thee! Fareweel, auld birkie! Lord be near ye, And then the de'il he daurna steer ye : Your friends aye love, your foes aye fear ye; For me, shame fa' me, If neist my heart I dinna wear ye, While Burns they ca' me! LAMENT FOR JAMES, EARL OF GLENCAIRN. [The Earl of Glencairn died at Falmouth, on the 30th of January, 1791, in the forty-second year of his age, having just returned from a voyage to Lisbon, undertaken in the vain hope that it might contribute to the re-establishment of his health. Through his factor, Mr. Alexander Dalzell, he had made the Poet's acquaintance, and had at once become his most conspicuous patron, and his most practical benefactor. He carried the Kilmarnock edition to Edinburgh, where he brought it widely to the general knowledge as a literary curiosity. Mainly through his instrumentality, the Caledonian Hunt subscribed so open-handedly to the enlarged Edinburgh edition, that the latter was forthwith swung into popularity. Burns's gratitude was unaffected and enduring. His fourth son, born on the 12th of August, 1794, he had christened, in memory of his noble admirer, James Glencairn, this fourth son dying as recently as 1865, at the age of seventy-one, having, like his elder brother William, risen to be a Lieutenant-Colonel in the East India Company's service. William Hazlitt, it may be worthy of note here, had a very high opinion indeed of the pathetic force of the closing stanza of this Lament.] THE wind blew hollow frae the hills, By fits the sun's departing beam Looked on the fading yellow woods That waved o'er Lugar's winding stream: Beneath a craigy steep, a bard, Laden with years and meikle pain, In loud lament bewailed his lord, Whom death had all untimely ta'en. LINES shouted out "ça ira!" in defiance of the upstanding audience. A tumult arising in conse SENT TO SIR JOHN Whitefoord of WHITE- quence of this incident, Burns was constrained [These lines were written in the early part of October, 1791, judging, that is, from Sir John Whitefoord's letter of acknowledgment, which is dated on the 16th of that month from Maybole.] to leave the theatre, and shortly afterwards, in the December of 1792, received a rebuke on his political conduct from the excise authorities.] WHILE Europe's eye is fixed on mighty things, The fate of empires and the fall of kings; THOU, who thy honour as thy God While quacks of state must each produce rever❜st, THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. [These lines, as Burns intimated to Miss Fontenelle, were written nearly extempore. They were delivered at the Dumfries Theatre on the 26th of November, 1792, by that young and beautiful actress, then one of the most popular members of the company under Mr. Sutherland's his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man; Amid this mighty fuss, just let me men tion, The Rights of Woman merit some attention. First, in the sexes' intermixed connection, tion. The tender flower that lifts its head, elate, Helpless, must fall before the blasts of fate, Sunk on the earth, defaced its lovely form, Unless your shelter ward th' impending storm. Our second Right-but needless here-is Caution; To keep that right inviolate's the fashion; him, He'd die before he'd wrong it—'t is decorum. There was, indeed, in far less polished days, management. The country was greatly agitated at the time by the revolutionary ideas caught from France, and propagated far and wide through the advocacy of the Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, and the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. Robert Chambers states that a lady whom he knew distinctly remembered being present in the theatre about this time when Burns entered the pit rather flustered, adding that she recalled to mind how on "God Save the King" being played by the band, the Poet Nay, even thus, invade a lady's quiet. A time when rough rude men had naughty [Mrs. Maria Riddel was the lady here ridiculed. The name of Eliza was introduced, it is believed, merely as a blind. In one of the manuscripts the real name is frankly given as Maria. Burns had quarrelled with Mrs. Riddel somewhere about the Christmas of 1793; and it was thus cruelly that he sneered, as though she had been a mere empty-headed coquette, at a For Right the third, our last, our best, lady who was both beautiful and accomplished.] our dearest, That right to fluttering female hearts the How cold is that bosom which folly once nearest, Which even the Rights of Kings in low prostration fired! How pale is that cheek where the rouge lately glistened! Most humbly own - 't is dear, dear How silent that tongue which the echoes Admiration! In that blest sphere alone we live and move; There taste that life of life-immortal Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirta tions, airs, oft tired! How dull is that ear which to flattery so listened! If sorrow and anguish their exit await, From friendship and dearest affection removed; 'Gainst such an host what flinty savage How doubly severer, Eliza, thy fate, |