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While praising, and raising

His thoughts to heav'n on high,
As wand'ring, meand'ring,

He views the solemn sky.

IV.

Than I, no lonely hermit plac'd
Where never human footstep trac'd,
Less fit to play the part;

The lucky moment to improve,

And just to stop, and just to move,
With self-respecting art:

But, ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys,
Which I too keenly taste,

The solitary can despise,
Can want, and yet be blest!
He needs not, he heeds not,
Or human love or hate,
Whilst I here, must cry here
At perfidy ingrate!

V.

Oh! enviable, early days,

When dancing thoughtless pleasure's maze,

To care, to guilt unknown!

How ill exchang'd for riper times,

To feel the follies, or the crimes,

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Ye tiny elves that guiltless sport,

Like linnets in the bush,
Ye little know the ills ye court,
When manhood is your wish!
The losses, the crosses,
That active man engage!

The fears all, the tears all,
Of dim declining age!

It would form perhaps one of the most amusing, if not the most instructive chapter in poetic history, to compare the various opinions expressed by the inspired respecting happiness. He who dwells in a lonely valley believes happiness resides in the crowded city, among company and books; while he who sings amid the rattle of other men's chariot-wheels, and the smoke of ten thousand chimnies, fixes the abode of happiness by the side of some purling brook,—beside a green hill, where the wind is ever fragrant, and the voice of nature alone is heard. The high-born bard, sick of the hollow courtesies of polished society, sighs for pastoral solitudes, where flowers never fade, and flocks never stray, and beauty is never out of blossom: the shepherd bard, on the other hand, who has to wander over moors and mountains, half-choked in winter with drifting snow, and half-scorched in summer with burning suns,—who has to smear and clip his flocks, as well as keep them from the fox, and save them, too, from smothering in a snowwreath, envies the opulent, and longs to be a lord. There was some sense in the remark of the Scotchman, who, in reading the saying of Solomon,-" Snow is beautiful in its season," exclaimed, “ Aye, nae doubt it was beautiful to you sitting with rich wines and the

lasses o' Jerusalem aside you: but had ye been a poor stane-mason ye would hae said no such thing.”

It is plain that Burns did not find happiness on the furrowed field; or in galloping three hundred miles aweek over ten parishes as a gauger: he looks back on the enviable days of his boyhood, and thinks them ill-exchanged for the riper times and full-blown follies of manhood. In this he agrees with Gray, who exclaims, in his " Distant prospect of Eton College:" "Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!

Ah fields beloved in vain,

Where once my careless childhood strayed
A stranger yet to pain.

I feel the gales that from ye blow

A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing,

My weary soul they seem to sooth,
And redolent of joy and youth,

To breathe a second spring."

"I think," observes Burns, "it is one of the greatest pleasures attending a poetic genius, that we can give our woes, cares, joys, and loves an embodied form in verse; which to me is ever immediate ease." Fuseli, the painter, seeing his wife in a passion one day, said, “Swear, my love, swear heartily; you know not how much it will ease you."

THE

COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESQ.

"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short but simple annals of the poor."

GRAY.

I.

My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend!
No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end :
My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise:
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,

The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene;
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;
What Aiken in a cottage would have been ;

Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween!

II.

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;
The short'ning winter-day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh:
The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose:
The toil-worn cotter frae his labour goes,

This night his weekly moil is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.

III.

At length his lonely cot appears in view,
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher thro'
To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee.
His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily,

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile. An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil.

IV.

Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in,
At service out, amang the farmers roun':
Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin
A cannie errand to a neebor town:

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