Pale grew the roses on thy cheek,
And wither'd was thy bloom,

Till the slow poison brought thy youth
Untimely to the tomb.

Thus wasted are the ranks of men,
Youth, Health, and Beauty fall:
The ruthless ruin spreads around,
And overwhelms us all.

Behold where round thy narrow house
The graves unnumber'd lie!

The multitudes that sleep below
Existed but to die.

Some, with the tottering steps of Age,
Trod down the darksome way:
And some, in youth's lamented prime,
Like thee, were torn away.

Yet these, however hard their fate,
Their native earth receives :

Amid their weeping friends they died,
And fill their fathers' graves.

From thy lov'd friends when first thy heart
Was taught by Heaven to flow,
Far, far remov'd, the ruthless stroke
Surpris'd and laid thee low.

At the last limits of our isle,

Wash'd by the western wave,

Touch'd by thy fate, a thoughtful bard
Sits lonely on thy grave.

Pensive he eyes before him spread
The deep, outstretch'd and vast ;
His mourning notes are borne away
Along the rapid blast.

And while, amid the silent Dead
Thy hapless fate he mourns,
His own long sorrows freshly bleed,
And all his grief returns.

Like thee, cut off in early youth
And flower of beauty's pride,
His friend, his first and only joy,
His much loved Stella, died.

Him, too, the stern impulse of Fate
Resistless bears along;

And the same rapid tide shall whelm
The Poet and the Song.

The tear of pity which he shed,

He asks not to receive;

Let but his poor remains be laid
Obscurely in the grave.

His grief-worn heart, with truest joy,
Shall meet the welcome shock;
His airy harp shall lie unstrung
And silent on the rock.

O, my dear maid, my Stella, when
Shall this sick period close,
And leave the solitary bard
To his beloved repose?

NAETHING.

(PROBABLY ADDRESSED TO GAVIN HAMILTON, 1786.)

To you, Sir, this summons I've sent,
Pray whip till the pownie is fraething;

But if you demand what I want,

I honestly answer you-naething.

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бо

Ne'er scorn a poor Poet like me,
For idly just living and breathing,
While people of every degree

Are busy employed about--naething.

Poor Centum-per-centum may fast,

And grumble his hurdies their claithing;
He'll find, when the balance is cast,
He's gane to the devil for-naething.

The courtier cringes and bows,
Ambition has likewise its plaything;
A coronet beams on his brows:
And what is a coronet ?-naething.

Some quarrel the Presbyter gown,
Some quarrel Episcopal graithing,
But every good fellow will own
Their quarrel is all about-naething.

The lover may sparkle and glow,
Approaching his bonnie bit gay thing:
But marriage will soon let him know
He's gotten a buskit up naething.

The Poet may jingle and rhyme

In hopes of a laureate wreathing, And when he has wasted his time He's kindly rewarded with naething.

The thundering bully may rage,

And swagger and swear like a heathen; But collar him fast, I'll engage,

You'll find that his courage is naething.

Last night with a feminine whig,
A Poet she couldna put faith in,

But soon we grew lovingly big,

I taught her her terrors were naething.

ΙΟ

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Her whigship was wonderful pleased,
But charmingly tickled with ae thing;
Her fingers I lovingly squeezed,

And kissed her and promised her-naething.

The priest anathémas may threat,-
Predicament, Sir, that we're baith in;
But when honour's reveillé is beat,
The holy artillery's naething.

And now, I must mount on the wave,
My voyage perhaps there is death in:
But what of a watery grave?

The drowning a Poet is naething.

And now, as grim death's in my thought,
To you, Sir, I make this bequeathing:

My service as long as ye've aught,

And my friendship, by God! when ye've naething.

FRAGMENTARY VERSES.

HIS face with smile eternal drest-
Just like the Landlord's to his Guest,
High where they hang, with creaking din,
To index out a country inn.

A head pure, sinless quite, of brain or soul;
The very image of a barber's poll-

It shows a human face, and wears a wig,
And looks, when well preserved, amazing big.

He looks as sign-board Lions do,
As fierce, and just as harmless too.

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Notes.

Page 1. Tam o' Shanter. Burns thought this poem his best; and Sir Walter Scott, no bad judge of a tale of diablerie, approved his judgement. It was written late in the autumn of 1790, when the poet was near the close of his thirty-second year. He was then resident on his farm at Ellisland, a few miles up the Nith from Dumfries; but, though still a farmer, he had already commenced the active duties of a gauger, or excise-officer. The occasion of the poem was an arrangement with Grose, the antiquary, who promised to include, in his collection of the pictured Antiquities of Scotland, the primitive Kirk of Alloway, near Ayr, if Burns on his part furnished a witch story to accompany the engraving. Burns not only gave him the metrical Tale of Tam o' Shanter, but sketched in prose three legends of Kirk Alloway besides -one of which is of interest as the groundwork of the poem : here it is in Burns's own words:

On a market day, in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick, and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway Kirk-yard, in order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about two or three hundred yards farther on than the said gate, had been detained by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard hour, between night and morning.

Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the Kirk, yet as it is a well known fact, that to turn back on these occasions is running by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced on his road.

When he

had reached the gate of the Kirk-yard, he was surprised and entertained, through the ribs and arches of an old Gothic window, which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer, stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was dressed, tradition does not say, but that the ladies were all in their smocks; and one of them happening unluckily to have a smock