Dost thou spurn the humble vale?

Life's proud summits wouldst thou scale?
Check thy climbing step, elate,

Evils lurk in felon wait:
Dangers, eagle-pinion'd, bold,
Soar around each cliffy hold,
While cheerful peace, with linnet song,
Chants the lowly dells among.

As the shades of evening close,
Beckoning thee to long repose;
As life itself becomes disease,
Seek the chimney-nook of ease.
There ruminate with sober thought,

17

On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought; 30 And teach the sportive younkers round,

Saws of experience, sage and sound.

Say, man's true, genuine estimate,
The grand criterion of his fate,
Is not, Art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow?
Did many talents gild thy span ?
Or frugal nature grudge thee one?
Tell them, and press it on their mind,
As thou thyself must shortly find,
The smile or frown of awful Heaven,
To virtue or to vice is given.
Say, to be just, and kind, and wise,
There solid self-enjoyment lies:
That foolish, selfisli, faithless ways,
Lead to the wretched, vile, and base.
Thus resign'd and quiet, creep

To the bed of lasting sleep;

Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake,

Night, where dawn shall never break,

40

50

50

Till future life, future no more,

To light and joy the good restore,

To light and joy unknown before.
Stranger, go! Heaven be thy guide!
Quod the beadsman of Nithside.

ODE,' SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS OSWALD OF AUCHENCRUIVE.

DWELLER in yon dungeon dark,
Hangman of creation! mark
Who in widow-weeds appears,
Laden with unhonour'd years,
Noosing with care a bursting purse,
Baited with many a deadly curse!

51

STROPHE.

View the wither'd beldame's face

Can thy keen inspection trace

Aught of humanity's sweet, melting grace ?

Note that eye, 'tis rheum o'erflows,

Pity's flood there never rose.

See those hands, ne'er stretch'd to save,
Hands that took--but never gave.

Keeper of Mammon's iron chest,

Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest;

She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest!

10

''Ode:' every reader of Burns remembers the circumstances under which this savage ode was composed.

ANTISTROPHE.

Plunderer of armies, lift thine eyes,

(A while forbear, ye torturing fiends!)

Seest thou whose step unwilling hither bends?
No fall'n angel, hurl'd from upper skies;

"Tis thy trusty quondam mate,

Doom'd to share thy fiery fatc,
She, tardy, hellward plies.

EPODE.

And are they of no more avail,
Ten thousand glitt' ring pounds a-year?
In other worlds can Mammon fail,
Omnipotent as he is here?

17

Oh, bitter mockery of the pompous bier,
While down the wretched vital part is driven !
The cave-lodged beggar, with a conscience clear,
Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to heaven.

ELEGY ON CAPTAIN MATTHEW HENDERSON,

A GENTLEMAN WHO HELD THE PATENT FOR HIS HONOURS IMMEDIATELY FROM ALMIGHTY GOD!

'But now his radiant course is run,

For Matthew's course was bright;

His soul was like the glorious sun,

A matchless, heavenly light!'

1 0 DEATH! thou tyrant fell and bloody!
The meikle devil wi' a woodie

Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie,

O'er hurcheon hides,

And like stockfish come o'er his studdie

Wi' thy auld sides!

B

'Captain M. Henderson: a harmless old Edinburgh bon-vivant, who had once been in the army.

2 He's gane! he's gane! he's frae us toru, The ae best fellow e'er was born!

Thee, Matthew, Nature's sel' shall mourn
By wood and wild,

Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn,

Frae man exiled.

3 Ye hills, near neibours o' the sterns, That proudly cock your cresting cairns! Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns,

Where Echo slumbers!

Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns,
My wailing numbers!

4 Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens!
Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens!
Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens.
Wi' toddlin' din,

Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens,

Frae linn to linn.

5 Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea; Ye stately foxgloves, fair to see; Ye woodbines, hanging bonnilie

In scented bowers;

Ye roses on your thorny tree,

The first o' flowers.

6 At dawn, when every grassy blade
Droops with a diamond at its head,
At even, when beans their fragrance shed,
I' the rustling gale,

Ye maukins, whiddin' through the glade,

Come join my wail!

7 Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood;

Ye grouse, that

crap the heather bud;

Ye curlews, calling through a clud;

Ye whistling plover;

And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood

He's gane for ever!

8 Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals; Ye fisher herons, watching eels;

Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels

Circling the lake;

Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,

Rair for his sake!

9 Mourn, clam'ring craiks at close o' day, 'Mang fields o' flowering clover gay; And when ye wing your annual way Frae our cauld shore,

Tell thae far warlds, wha lies in clay,
Wham we deplore.

10 Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower,
In some auld tree, or eldritch tower,
What time the moon, wi' silent glower,
Sets up her horn,

Wail through the dreary midnight hour
Till waukrife morn!

11 O rivers, forests, hills, and plains! Oft have Je heard my canty strains: But now, what else for me remains

But tales of woe?

And frae my e'en the drapping rains

Maun ever flow.