dell,

Once the loved haunts of Scotia's royal train;

Or mused where limpid streams, once hallowed, well,

Or mouldering ruins mark the sacred fane.

Th' increasing blast roared round the beetling rocks,

The clouds, swift-winged, flew o'er the starry sky,

"A weeping country joins a widow's tear;

The helpless poor mix with the orphan's cry;

The paly moon rose in the livid east,

And 'mong the cliffs disclosed a stately form,

bier,

And grateful Science heaves the heartfelt sigh!

"I saw my sons resume their ancient

fire;

I saw fair Freedom's blossoms richly blow :

breast,

And mixed her wailings with the raving storm.

Wild to my heart the filial pulses glow; 'T was Caledonia's trophied shield I viewed :

Relentless Fate has laid their guardian low.

"My patriot falls,-but shall he lie un

sung,

While empty greatness saves a worthless name?

[This was the first poem produced by Burns after he had taken up his residence at Ellisland. There he fortunately gained the intimacy of Captain Robert Riddel of Glenriddel, a gentleman of great literary, musical, and antiquarian accomplishments. The first six lines the Poet cut with his diamond ring on a pane of glass in the Hermitage. Years afterwards the frame, which was partially fractured, was removed from FriarsCarse, and on being put up to auction was sold for five guineas. Two versions of the poem were penned by Burns, the earlier of which, dated the 28th June, 1788, is immediately subjoined.]

FIRST VERSION.

THOU whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed,
Be thou deckt in silken stole,
Grave these maxims on thy soul.

Life is but a day at most, Sprung from night, in darkness lost; Hope not sunshine every hour, Fear not clouds will always lour. Happiness is but a name, Make content and ease thy aim. Ambition is a meteor-gleam; Fame, an idle, restless dream; Peace, the tenderest flower of spring; Pleasures, insects on the wing; Those that sip the dew alone, Make the butterflies thy own; Those that would the bloom devour, Crush the locusts, save the flower. For the future be prepared, Guard, wherever thou canst guard; But thy utmost duly done, Welcome what thou canst not shun. Follies past give thou to air, Make their consequence thy care: Keep the name of Man in mind, And dishonour not thy kind. Reverence, with lowly heart,

Him whose wondrous work thou art;

Stranger, go! Heaven be thy guide! Quod the beadsman of Nith-side.

[The latter version-which evidently had the Author's preference, and is, everything considered, more highly elaborated-bears the date of December, 1788.]

SECOND VERSION.

THOU whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed,
Be thou deckt in silken stole,
Grave these counsels on thy soul.

Life is but a day at most,

Sprung from night, in darkness lost;
Hope not sunshine every hour,
Fear not clouds will also lower.

As youth and love, with sprightly dance,
Beneath thy morning star advance,
Pleasure with her siren air
May delude the thoughtless pair;
Let prudence bless enjoyment's cup,
Then raptured sip, and sip it up.

As thy day grows warm and high,
Life's meridian flaming nigh,
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-pinioned, bold,
Soar around each cliffy hold,
While cheerful peace, with linnet song,
Chants the lowly dells among.

As the shades of evening close,
Beck'ning thee to long repose!
As life itself becomes disease,
Seek the chimney-neuk of ease.
There ruminate with sober thought,

On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought;

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, selfish, faithless ways,
Lead to the wretched, vile, and base.

Thus resigned and quiet, creep
To the bed of lasting sleep;
Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake,
Night, where dawn shall never break,
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 Nith-side.

TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL, OF

GLENRIDDEL.

[Dated Ellisland, Monday evening, these lines were dashed off extempore, and evidently with the greatest ease, when returning a newspaper which contained some anonymous scribbler's derisive comments upon the Poet's writings, the fame of which not only he himself, but with him all the great authorities in literature then living, knew perfectly well by that time was securely established, and in perpetuity.]

YOUR news and review, Sir, I've read through and through, Sir, With little admiring or blaming ; The papers are barren of home news or foreign,

No murders or rapes worth the naming.

Our friends, the reviewers, those chippers and hewers,

Are judges of mortar and stone, Sir; But of meet or unmeet, in a fabric complete,

I boldly pronounce they are none, Sir.

My goose-quill too rude is to tell all your goodness

Bestowed on your servant, the Poet; Would to God I had one like a beam of

the sun,

And then all the world, Sir, should know it!

EPISTLE TO HUGH PARKER.

[Written shortly after the Poet's first arrival at Ellisland, where he lived in a nomadic way from the 13th of June till towards the end of November, occupying the merest makeshift quarters, until he was enabled to bring his wife and children home to the new farm-house. Half this time, as he wrote to one of his correspondents, he passed with his darling Jean; "and then at lucid intervals," saith he, "I throw my horny

fist across my be-cobwebbed lyre, much in the same manner as an old wife throws her hand across the spokes of her spinning-wheel." In one of these lucid intervals, he wrote this animated epistle to his friend Hugh Parker, merchant of Kilmarnock.]

IN this strange land, this uncouth clime, A land unknown to prose or rhyme; Where words ne'er crost the Muse's heckles,

Nor limpit in poetic shackles ;

A land that prose did never view it, Except when drunk he stacher't through

it:

Here, ambushed by the chimla cheek,

Hid in an atmosphere of reek,

I hear a wheel thrum i' the neuk,

I hear it for in vain I leuk.
The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel,
Enhusked by a fog infernal:
Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures,
I sit and count my sins by chapters;
For life and spunk like ither Christians,
I'm dwindled down to mere existence;
Wi' nae converse but Gallowa' bodies,
Wi' nae kenned face but Jenny Geddes.
Jenny, my Pegasean pride!
Dowie she saunters down Nithside,
And aye a westlin' leuk she throws,

While tears hap o'er her auld brown

nose!

Was it for this, wi' canny care,

For I could lay my bread and kail
He'd ne'er cast saut upo' my tail.-
Wi' a' this care and a' this grief,
And sma', sma' prospect of relic,
And nought but peat-reek i' my head,
How can I write what ye can read?—
Tarbolton, twenty-fourth o' June,
Ye 'll find me in a better tune;
But till we meet and weet our whistle,
Tak' this excuse for nae epistle.

ROBERT BURNS.

FIRST EPISTLE TO ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ., OF FINTRY.

[Burns had been introduced to Robert Graham at Athole House; and in the letter enclosing this poem, under date September, 1788, the farmerpoet says with courtly grace, "When Lear in Shakspere asks Kent why he wished to be in his service, he answers-- Because you have that in your face which I could like to call master.' For some such reason, sir, do I solicit your patronage." As the result of the present application, Burns asked and obtained, through Mr. Graham's intermediation, his commission as an exciseman.]

WHEN Nature her great masterpiece designed,