In cot or castle's mirth or moan,

In cold or sunny clime.

And who has heard his song, nor knelt
Before its spell with willing knee,
And listened and believed, and felt
The poet's mastery.

O'er the mind's sea, in calm and storm,
O'er the heart's sunshine and its showers,
O'er Passion's moments, bright and warm,
O'er Reason's dark, cold hours;

On fields where brave men “die or do,"
In halls where rings the banquet's mirth,
Where mourners weep, where lovers woo,
From throne to cottage hearth?

What sweet tears dim the eye unshed,
What wild vows falter on the tongue,
When "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,"
Or "Auld Lang Syne," is sung!

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64

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76

Pure hopes that lift the soul above,

Come with his Cotter's hymn of praise,

And dreams of youth, and truth, and love,
With "Logan's" banks and braes.

80

And when he breathes his master-lay
Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall,

All passions in our frames of clay
Come thronging at his call.

Imagination's world of air,

And our own world, its gloom and glee, Wit, pathos, poetry, are there,

And death's sublimity.

And Burns-though brief the race he ran, Though rough and dark the path he trodLived, died, in form and soul a man,

The image of his God.

Through care, and pain, and want, and woe,
With wounds that only death could heal,
Tortures-the poor alone can know,
The proud alone can feel;

He kept his honesty and truth,

His independent tongue and pen,

And moved, in manhood as in youth,
Pride of his fellow-men.

Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong,
A hate of tyrant and of knave,
A love of right, a scorn of wrong,
Of coward and of slave;

A kind, true heart, a spirit high,

That could not fear and would not bow,

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104

Were written in his manly eye

And on his manly brow.

Praise to the bard! his words are driven,
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown.

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Where'er beneath the sky of heaven,

The birds of fame have flown.

Praise to the man! a nation stood
Beside his coffin with wet eyes,

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Her brave, her beautiful, her good,

116

As when a loved one dies.

And still, as on his funeral-day,

Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined-
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,

The Meccas of the mind.

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138

Sages, with Wisdom's garland wreathed, Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power,

And warriors with their bright swords

sheathed,

The mightiest of the hour;

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And lowlier names, whose humble home

Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star,
Are there-o'er wave and mountain come,
From countries near and far;

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Pilgrims, whose wandering feet have pressed
The Switzer's snow, the Arab's sand,
Or trod the piled leaves of the West,
My own green forest-land.

All ask the cottage of his birth,

Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung,

And gather feelings not of earth

His fields and streams among.

They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,
And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries!
The Poet's tomb is there.

But what to them the Sculptor's art,

His funeral columns, wreaths, and urns?

Wear they not graven on the heart
The name of Robert Burns?

1822.

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152

Fits-Greene Halleck.

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

3

I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies;

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a Love once, fairest among women: Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her,All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

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12

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood;

Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse. Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

15

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces.

For some they have died, and some they have

left me,

And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

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21

1798.

Charles Land.