And, like a stricken deer, I stray

Where all are strange, and none are kindKind to the worm, the wearied soul,

That pants, that struggles for repose: O that my steps had reached the goal Where earthly sighs and sorrows close! 2. Years have passed o'er me, like a dream That leaves no trace on memory's page: I look around me, and I seem

Some relic of a former age. Alone, as in a stranger clime,

Where stranger voices mock my ear,
I mark the lagging course of time,
Without a wish-a hope-a fear!

3. Yet I had hopes--and they have fled;
And fears-and they were all too true;
My wishes too-but they are dead;
And what have I with life to do?
Tis but to wear a weary load

I may not, dare not, cast away;
To sigh for one small, still abode,
Where I may sleep as sweet as they ;
4. As they the loveliest of their race,
Whose grassy tombs my sorrows steep,
Whose worth my soul delights to trace,
Whose very loss 'tis sweet to weep,-
To weep beneath the silent moon

With none to chide, to hear, to see:
Life can bestow no greater boon

On one whom death disdains to free. 5. I leave the world that knows me not, To hold cominunion with the dead; And fancy consecrates the spot

Where fancy's softest dreams are shed. I see each shade-all silvery whiteI hear each spirit's melting sigh; I turn to clasp those forms of light,— And the pale morning chills my eye. 6. But soon the last dim morn shall rise,The lamp of life burns feebly now,— When stranger hands shall close my eyes, And smooth my cold and dewy brow. Unknown I lived; so let me die: Nor stone, nor monumental cross,

Tell where his nameless ashes lie,

Who sighed for gold, and found it dross.

SECTION II.

The Winter Night.

1. Now Phœbe, in her midnight reign,
Dark muffled, viewed the dreary plain,
While crowding thoughts, a pensive train,
Rose in my soul,—

When on my ear this plaintive strain,
Slow, solemn, stole:

2. "Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!
And freeze, thou bitter, biting frost!
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!
Not all your rage, as now united, shows
More hard unkindness, unrelenting
Vengeful malice, unrepenting,

Than heaven-illumin'd man on brother man bestows.

3. See stern oppression's iron grip,
Or mad ambition's gory hand,
Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip,
Wo, want, and murder o'er a land!

4. Even in the peaceful rural vale,
Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale,
How pampered luxury,-flattery by her side,
The parasite empoisoning her ear,
With all the servile wretches in the rear,-
Looks o'er proud property, extended wide,
And eyes the simple rustic hind,

Whose toil upholds the glittering show,-
A creature of another kind,

Some coarser substance, unrefined,

Placed for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, below.

5. Where, where is love's fond, tender throe,
With lordly honor's lofty brow,

The powers you proudly own?
Is there, beneath love's noble name,
Can harbor, dark, the selfish aim,
To bless himself alone?

6. O ye! who, sunk in beds of down,

Feel not a want but what yourselves create

Think for a moment on his wretched fate
Whom friends and fortune quite disown!
Ill sausfied keen nature's clamorous call,

Stitched on his straw he lays himself to sleep
While through the ragged roof and chinky wali,
Chill, o'er his slumbers, piles the drifty heap:-

7. Think on the dungeon's grim confine,
Where guilt and poor misfortune pine!
Guilt, erring man relenting view!-
But shall thy legal rage pursue
The wretch, already crushed low
By cruel fortune's undeserved blow?
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress,
A brother to relieve how exquisite the bliss!"
8. I heard no more; for Chanticleer
Shook off the powdery snow,

And hailed the morning with a cheer,
A cottage rousing crow.

But deep this truth impressed my mind-
Through all his works abroad,

The heart benevolent and kind

The most resembles God.

Burns.

SECTION III.

The Cotler's Saturday Night, or a Scottish Peasant's Family Devotion.

1. THE frugal supper done, with cheerful face,
They round the fireside form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er with patriarchal grace,
The sacred Bible once his father's pride:

His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His hoary locks displaying, thin and bare, Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He seeks a portion with judicious care;

And "Let us worship God," he says with solemn air.

2. They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:
Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;
Or noble Elgin beats the heav'nward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:
Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame,

The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise,
Nor unison have they with our Creator's praise.
3. The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abra'm was the friend of God on high;
Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage

With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
Or, how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or, Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or, rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire;

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.
4. Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He, who bore in heav'n the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay his head:
How his first followers and servants sped;
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand;

And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command.

5. Then kneeling down to Heaven's eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"
That thus they all shall meet in future days;
There, ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear;
Together hymning their Creator's praise,

In such society, yet still more dear,

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.
6. Compar'd with this, how poor religion's pride,
In all the pomp of method, and of art,
When men display to congregations wide,
Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart!
The pow'r incens'd the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ;
But haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul;
And in his book of life the inmates poor enroll.

7. From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad; Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 'An honest man's the noblest work of God;" And certain, in fair virtue's heav'nly road,

The cottage leaves the palace far behind; What is a lordling's pomp?, a cumbrous load, Disguising oft the wretch of human-kind,

Studied in arts most vile, in wickedness refin'd! Burns

SECTION IV.

The Burial of Sir John Moore.

1. Nor a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corse o'er the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
2. We buried him darkly, at dead of night,
The sod with our bayonets turning,
By the trembling moon-beams' misty light,
And our lantern dimly burning.

3. No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet, nor in shroud we bound him;
But he lay-like a warrior taking his rest,
His martial cloak wrapt around him.

4. Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
And bitterly thought of the morrow.

5. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
And smooth'd down his lowly pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we, far away o'er the billow.

6. Lightly they'll speak of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ;

But little he'll reck if they let him sleep on,

In the grave where his comrades have laid him.

7. Not the half of our heavy task was done,
When the bell toll'd the hour for retiring;
And we heard, too, the distant random gun,
That the foe was then suddenly firing.

8. Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carv'd not a line, we rais'd not a stone,
But we left him alone-with his glory.

Wolfe.