Oh all ye powers who rule above!

Oh Thou whose very self art love!
Thou know'st my words sincere!
The life-blood streaming through my heart,
Or my more dear immortal part,
Is not more fondly dear!
When heart-corroding care and grief
Deprive my soul of rest,

Her dear idea brings relief

And solace to my breast.
Thou Being, all-seeing,

Oh hear my fervent prayer!
Still take her, and make her
Thy most peculiar care!

All hail, ye tender feelings dear!
The smile of love, the friendly tear,
The sympathetic glow!

Long since, this world's thorny ways
Had numbered out my weary days,

Had it not been for you!

the charge of the children of Mrs. Stewart of Stair. Burns, accompanying his friend on a visit to Stair, found some other lasses there who were good singers, and communicated to them some of his songs in manuscript. Chance threw one of these in the way of Mrs. Stewart, who, being struck by its elegance and tenderness, resolved to become acquainted with the author. Accordingly, on his next visit to the house, he was asked to go into the drawing-room to see Mrs. Stewart, who thus became the first friend he had above his own rank in life. It was not the fortune of "Meg" to become Mrs. Sillar.

Fate still has blest me with a friend,

In every care and ill;

And oft a more endearing band,

A tie more tender still.

It lightens, it brightens
The tenebrific scene,

To meet with, and greet with
My Davie or my Jean!

Oh how that name inspires my style!

The words come skelpin', rank and

file,

Amaist before I ken!

The ready measure rins as fine

As Phoebus and the famous Nine

Were glowrin' owre my pen.

My spaviet Pegasus will limp,

thronging

staring

Till ance he's fairly het;

And then he'll hilch, and stilt, and jimp, hobble

And rin an unco fit:

But lest then, the beast then

Should rue this hasty ride,
I'll light now, and dight now
His sweaty, wizened hide.

at a good pace

wipe withered

DEATH AND DR. HORNBOOK:

A TRUE STORY.

In the seed-time of 1785 — the date is from the poet's own authority-Burns attended a masonic meeting at Torbolton, when there chanced to be also present the schoolmaster of the parish, a man with as powerful a self-esteem as the poet himself, though of a different kind, or manifested differently. This personage, John Wilson by name, to eke out a scanty subsistence, as Gilbert tells us, "had set up a shop of grocery goods." Having accidentally fallen in with some medical books, and become most hobby-horsically attached to the study of medicine, he had added the sale of a few medicines to his little trade. He had got a shop-bill printed, at the bottom of which, overlooking his own incapacity, he had advertised that "Advice would be given in common disorders at the shop gratis." On this occasion he made a somewhat too ostentatious display of his medical attainments. It is said that Burns and he had a dispute, in which the poor dominie brought forward his therapeutics somewhat offensively. Be this as it may, in going home that night, Burns conceived, and partly composed, his poem of Death and Dr. Hornbook. "These circumstances," adds Gilbert," he related when he repeated the verses to me next afternoon, as I was holding the plough, and he was letting the water off the field beside me."

This, then, as far as we can see, is, next to the Epistle to Davie, the first considerable poem by Burns manifesting anything like the vigor which is characteristic of his principal pieces.

SOME books are lies frae end to end,
And some great lies were never penned:
Ev'n ministers they hae been kenned,
In holy rapture,

A rousing whid at times to vend,
And nail't wi' Scripture.

But this that I am gaun to tell,
Which lately on a night befell,
Is just as true's the deil's in hell,
Or Dublin city :

That e'er he nearer comes oursel'
'S a muckle pity.

The clachan yill had made me canty
I was na fou, but just had plenty ;

fib

going

village ale

I stachered whyles, but yet took tent aye staggered
To free the ditches;

And hillocks, stanes, and bushes kenn'd aye
Frae ghaists and witches.

The rising moon began to glow'r
The distant Cumnock hills out-owre:
To count her horns, wi' a' my power,
I set mysel';

stare

But whether she had three or four,
I could na tell.

I was come round about the hill,
And todlin' down on Willie's mill,1
Setting my staff wi' a' my skill,

To keep me sicker;

sure

Though leeward whyles, against my will, sometimes I took a bicker.

I there wi' Something did forgather,

short race

That put me in an eerie swither; dismal hesitation An awfu' scythe, out-owre ae shouther,

Clear-dangling, hang;

A three-taed leister on the ither

Lay, large and lang.

Its stature seemed lang Scotch ells twa,
The queerest shape that e'er I saw ;

For fient a wame it had ava;

And then, its shanks,

They were as thin, as sharp and sma',
As cheeks o' branks.2

fish-spear

belly - at all

"Guid e'en," quo' I; "friend, hae ye been mawin', When ither folk are busy sawin'?"

1 Torbolton Mill, then occupied by William Muir, an intimate friend of the Burns family-from him it was called Willie's Mill.

2 Branks - a kind of wooden frame, forming, with a rope, a bridle for troublesome horses or cows.