When ance life's day draws near the gloamin', twilight And fareweel dear, deluding woman! Oh, Life! how pleasant in thy morning, Like school-boys, at the expected warning, We wander there, we wander here, And though the puny wound appear, Some, lucky, find a flowery spot, And, haply, eye the barren hut With high disdain. With steady aim some fortune chase; Keen hope does every sinew brace; Without Through fair, through foul, they urge the race, Then cannie, in some cozie place, They close the day. And others, like your humble servan', Poor wights! nae rules nor roads observin'; To right or left, eternal swervin' They zigzag on; Till curst with age, obscure and starvin', Alas! what bitter toil and straining— E'en let her gang! Beneath what light she has remaining, Let's sing our sang. quietly-snug Where can we find a more exhilarating enumeration of the enjoyments of youth, contrasted with their successive extinction as age advances, than in the Epistle to James Smith?'-PROFESSOR WALKER. 1 George Dempster of Dunnichen, then a conspicuous orator in parliament, and a friend to all patriotic institutions in his native land. He commenced his parliamentary career in 1762, closed it in 1790, and died in 1818 at the age of eighty-two. 2 Broth made without meat. It is pretty evident from this poem, that at the time of its composition Burns had thought of publishing, but not found cause to determine him upon committing the act. He is, meanwhile, content to rhyme for the enjoyment it affords him, and to accept his gift of country wit and verse as compensation for his want of the favour of fortune. He indulges in a strain of Epicurean philosophy, which the severest censor might pardon to one condemned to hopeless toils on the leys of Mossgiel, and who actually spent half his hours in oppressive melancholy. The bounding sense of enjoyment expressed in this poem is in striking contrast to the sombre tones of Man was made to Mourn and the verses To a Mouse, probably composed about the same time. There was, indeed, at this time a contention going on in Burns's mind between the sad consideration of his position in life and those poetical tendencies which might be interpreted as partly the cause of that position being so low. This contention we see traced in the several epistles he had written to his brother poets, Sillar, Lapraik, and Simpson, and to his friend Smith, during the course of the present year of flowing inspiration. It might have been easy for any of these individuals to see, that if Burns only 1 1 Smith afterwards had a calico-printing manufactory at Avon, near Linlithgow, but proved unsuccessful. It was his fate to end life where Burns at one time expected to end his—in the West Indies. could be a successful man of the world by an utter abandonment of the Muse, he never could be so at all, for he invariably ends by taking his rhyming power as a quittance of fortune. At length we have the final struggle between these two contending principles, and the triumph of the Muse, expressed in a poem of the highest strain of eloquence. 1 Duan, a term of Ossian's for the different divisions of a digressive pocin. See his 'Cath-Loda,' vol. ii. of M'Pherson's translation.-B. 2 Curling is a game nearly peculiar to the southern counties of Scotland. When strong ice can be obtained, a number of individuals, each provided with a large stone of the shape of an oblate spheroid, smoothed on the bottom, and furnished with a handle, range themselves in two sides, to play against each other. The game much resembles bowls, but is more animated, and, from its unavoidable rarity, is much more keenly enjoyed. It is well characterised as a roaring play. The parlour of the farmhouse of Mossgiel-its only apartment besides the kitchen-still exists nearly in the state in which it was when the poet described it as the scene of his vision of Coila. Though in every respect humble, and partly occupied by fixed beds, it does not appear uncomfortable. Every consideration, however, sinks beneath the one intense feeling, that here, within these four walls, warmed at this little fireplace, and lighted by this little window [it has but one], lived one of the most extraordinary men; here wrote some of the most celebrated poems of modern times.'-Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 93. All in this mottie, misty clime, But stringin' blethers up in rhyme, Had I to guid advice but harkit, While here, half-mad, half-fed, half-sarkit, I started, muttering, blockhead! coof! Or some rash aith, That I henceforth would be rhyme-proof When, click! the string the snick did draw; And by my ingle-lowe I saw, Now bleezin' bright, A tight, outlandish hizzie, braw, Ye needna doubt I held my whisht; In some wild glen;1 When sweet, like modest Worth, she blusht, Green, slender, leaf-clad holly-boughs I took her for some Scottish Muse, And come to stop those reckless vows, A hairbrained, sentimental trace '2 Shone full upon her; Her eye, even turned on empty space, Beamed keen with honour. fool hardened palm inward I stared as full of superstitious fear as if I had been thrown to the ground by meeting a being of the other world in some wild glen.' 2 This expression had previously occurred in the Epistle to James Smith. |