Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
What black despair, what horror fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot, which Fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and blest abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,

A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,

Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown,
What water, of the still unfrozen spring,

In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!

Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold;
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse!"

Who wrote the affecting ballad-song called Donocht-head? "It is not mine," said Burns; "I would give ten pounds it were. It appeared first in the Edinburgh Herald, and came to the editor of that paper with the Newcastle postmark on it." If we mistake not, Allan Cunninghame tells us that it was written by an unfortunate of the name of Picken, who lived, suffered, and died in or about the town to which it would be a foolish work of supererogation to carry coals. Dr. Currie felt its beauty-indeed, the doctor was, on the whole, a good critic-though some

times he subjected poets in their fever-fits to his favourite practice the cold bath. "This affecting poem," quoth he, is apparently incomplete. The author need not be ashamed to own himself. It is worthy of Burns or of Macneil." It bears perusal well, even immediately after Thomson's Death in Snow.

DONOCHT-HEAD.

"Keen blaws the wind o'er Donocht-head,
The snaw drives snelly through the dale,
The Gaberlunzie tirls my sneck,

And shivering tells his waefu' tale.
'Cauld is the night, O let me in,
And dinna let your minstrel fa,'
And dinna let his winding-sheet

Be naething but a wreath o' snaw.

"Full ninety winters hae I seen,

66

And piped where gor-cocks whirring flew
And mony a day I've danced, I ween,
To lilts which from my drone I blew.'
My Eppie waked, and soon she cried,
Get up, gudeman, and let him in;
For weel ye ken the winter night

Was short when he began his din.'

My Eppie's voice, I wow it's sweet,

Even though she bans and scaulds a wee;
But when it's tuned to sorrow's tale,

O, haith, it's doubly dear to me.
'Come in, auld carle, I'll steer my fire,
I'll make it bleeze a bonnie flame;
Your bluid is thin, ye've tint the gate,

Ye shouldna stray sae far frae hame.'

"Nae hame have I,' the minstrel said,
'Sad party-strife o'erturn'd my ha';
And, weeping at the eve of life,

I wander through a wreath o' snaw.'"

;

A fragment! and the more piteous because a fragment. Go in search of the pathetic, and you will find it tearsteeped, sigh-breathed, moan-muttered, and groaned in fragments. The poet seems often struck dumb by wo

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 character— of 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