his heart feels that suffering is at its acmé-and that he should break off and away from a sight too sad to be longer looked on-haply too humiliating to be disclosed. So, too, it sometimes is with the beautiful. The soul in its delight seeks to escape from the emotion that oppresses it-is speechless-and the song falls mute. Such is frequently the character-and the origin of that characterof our auld Scottish sangs. In their mournfulness are they not almost like the wail of some bird distracted on the bush from which its nest has been harried, and then suddenly flying away for ever into the woods? In their joyfulness, are they not almost like the hymn of some bird, that love-stricken suddenly darts from the tree-top down to the caresses that flutter through the spring? Yea, even such, too, are often the airs to which those dear auld sangs are sung! From excess of feeling-fragmentary! Or of one divine part-to which genius may be defied to conceive another, for but one hour in all time could have given it birth!

"The moon was a-waning!"

Is not that ane o' our ain shepherd's? It is indeed a— snaw-sang.

DIRGE.

"The moon was a-waning,

The tempest was over;

Fair was the maiden,

And fond was the lover;

But the snow was so deep,

That his heart it grew weary,
And he sunk down to sleep,
In the moorland so dreary.

"Soft was the bed

She had made for her lover,
White were the sheets,

And embroider'd the cover;
But his sheets are more white,
And his canopy grander,
And sounder he sleeps

Where the hill foxes wander.

"Alas, pretty maiden,

What sorrows attend you!

I see you sit shivering,

With lights at your window;
But long may you wait

Ere your arms shall enclose him,

For still, still he lies,

With a wreath on his bosom !

"How painful the task

The sad tidings to tell you!-
An orphan you were,

Ere this misery befell you;
And far in yon wild,

Where the dead-tapers hover,

So cold, cold and wan,

Lies the corpse of your lover!"

Daughter of our soul! would that from thy lips, and set to thine own music, the shepherd heard "The moon was a-waning," flow! The poet knows not the magic of his own strains, till he hears their inspiration in the breath of young and beautiful innocence. Then for the first time, perhaps, are his eyes wet with his own "repeated strains," and he feels that the virgin voice has, like a golden key, unlocked

"The sacred source of sympathetic tears!"

What sayeth our shepherd himself, in one of the delightfully characteristic notes or notices, in the collection of his songs-published this very day-of "The moon was a-waning?" "It is" quoth he, "one of the songs of my youth, written long ere I threw aside the shepherd's plaid, and took farewell of my barking colley, for a bard's perilous and thankless occupation. I was a poor shepherd half a century ago, and I have never got farther to this day but my friends would be far from regretting this, if they knew the joy of spirit that has been mine. This was the first song of mine I ever heard sung at the piano, and my feelings of exultation are not to be conceived by men of sordid dispositions. I had often heard my strains chanted from the ewe-bught and the milking-green with

:

delight; but I now found that I had got a step higher; I, therefore, was resolved to cling to my harp, with a fondness which no obloquy should diminish-and I have kept the resolution. The song was first set to music and sung by Miss C. Forest and has long been a favourite, and generally sung through a great portion of Scotland."

Yes, James-thou art but a poor shepherd still-poor in this world's goods-though Altrive Lake is a pretty little bit farmie-left to thee still-with its few laigh sheepbraes-its somewhat stony hayfield or two-its pasture where Crummie may unhungered graze-nyeuck for the potato's bloomy or ploomy shaws-and path divided from the porch the garden among whose flowers "wee Jamie" plays. But nature has given thee, to console thy heart in all disappointments, from the "false smiling of fortune beguiling," a boon which thou hast hugged to thy heart with transport on the darkest day-the "gift o' genie" and the power of immortal song!

And has Scotland to the Ettrick Shepherd been justbeen generous-as she was-or was not-to the Ayrshire peasant has she, in her conduct to him, shown her contrition for her sin-whatever that may have been-to Burns? It is hard to tell. Fashion tosses the feathered head-and gentility turns away her painted cheek from the mountain bard; but when, at the shrine of true poetry, did ever such votaries devoutly worship? Cold, false, and hollow, ever has been their admiration of genius-and different, indeed, from their evanescent ejaculations, has ever been the enduring voice of fame. Scorn be to the scorners! But Scott, and Southey, and Byron, and the other great bards, have all loved the Shepherd's lays-and Joanna the palm-crowned, and Felicia the Muse's darling, and Caroline the Christian poetess, and all the other fair female spirits of song. And in his native land, all hearts that love her streams, and her hills, and her cottages, and her kirks, the bee-humming garden, and the primrose-circled fold, the white hawthorn, and the green fairy-knowe, all delight in Kilmany and Mary Lee, and in many another vision that visited the Shepherd in the Forest. What more could he

desire, than such sweet assurance that his name will never die-but be remembered among those of

"

“The poets who, on earth, have made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays?"

Nor haply will the old man in future times be altogether forgotten, who, in moods of mirth or melancholy, still delighted to sound his dear shepherd's praise! While others scowled, he smiled-nor was the shepherd ungrate ful for the sunshine that thus illumined the gloom, though it was poured from an urn which his own genius had filled with golden light." We ever listened to his lyresounding sweetly to our ears in the wilderness-while all unheard by the ears of the worldlings amidst the smoke and stir of their earthy life. We loved to look on his honest face by the light of his own ingle-or of his own forest moon. And we, by aid of Gurney the engrosserhave heaped up on his behalf, out of the exhaustless granary of his own genius, words not a few and manycoloured,

"All redolent of youth,”

and of thoughts that, like perennial flowers, seemingly immortal in shade and sunshine, his imagination made rise from the seed it scattered lavishly and in profusion over a thousand hills. The face of the soul-is it not in its aspects-like the sky? and when is that sky so beautiful-as when far-and-wide, and high-over-head, spread out in the bright or dim, the merry or mournful light of the star-studded NOCTES?

The most undefinable of all undefinable kinds of poetical inspiration are surely-songs. They seem to start up indeed from the dew-sprinkled soil of a poet's soul, like flowers; the first stanza being the hidden root, the second leaf, the third bud, and all the rest blossoms, till the song is like a stalk laden with its own beauty, and laying itself down in languid delight on the soft bed of moss-song and flower alike having the same dying fall!" Perhaps the above is pure nonsense-but then so pure

66

All great song

that you need not fear to swallow it.
writers, nevertheless, have been great thieves. Those
who had the blessed fate to flourish first-to be born when
"this auld cloak was new," the cloak we mean which
Nature wears-scrupled not to creep upon her as she lay
asleep beneath the shadow of some single tree among

"The grace of forest-woods decay'd,
And pastoral melancholy,"

and to steal the very pearlins out of her hair-out of the silken snood which enamoured Pan himself had not untied in the Golden Age. Or if she ventured, as sometimes she did, to walk along the highways of the earth, they robbed her in the face of day of her dew-wrought reticule—without hurting, however, the hand from which they brushed that net of gossamer-a net of jewels and of diamonds

"Might ransom great kings from captivity."

Then came the Silver Age of Song, the age in which we now live-and the song-singers were thieves still--stealing and robbing from them who had stolen and robbed of old; yet, how account you for that phenomenon-all parties remaining richer than ever--and Nature, especially, after all this thieving and robbery, and piracy and plunder, many million times richer than the day on which she received her dowery,

"The bridal of the earth and sky;"

and with "golden store" sufficient in its scatterings to enable all the sons of genius she will ever bear, to “set up for themselves" in poetry, accumulating capital upon capital, till each is a Croesus, rejoicing to lend it out without any other interest than cent per cent, paid in sighs, smiles, and tears, and without any other security than the silent promise of a quiet eye,

"That broods and sleeps on its own heart!"

The most famous thieves in our time have been Rob, James, and Allan. Burns never saw or heard a jewel or