Say na thou'lt refuse me:
If it winna, canna be,

Thou, for thine may choose me,
Let me, lassie, quickly die,
Trusting that thou lo'es me.
Lassie, let me quickly die,

Trusting that thou lo'es me.

It requires also some acquaintance with the actual meaning of Burns' words to enter fully into the sense of his song to Chloris.

Sae flaxen were her ringlets,

Her eyebrows of a darker hue,

Bewitchingly o'er-arching

Twa laughin' een o' bonnie blue.

Her smiling sae wyling,

Wad make a wretch forget his woe;
What pleasure, what treasure,

Unto these rosy lips to grow:
Such was my Chloris' bonnie face,
When first her bonnie face I saw ;
And aye my Chloris' dearest charm,
She says she lo'es me best of a'.

Like harmony her motion;

Her pretty ankle is a spy

Betraying fair proportion,

Wad mak a saint forget the sky.
Sae warming, sae charming,

Her faultless form and gracefu' air;

Ilk feature-auld Nature

Declar'd that she could do nae mair:
Hers are the willing chains o' love,
By conquering beauty's sovereign law;
And aye my Chloris' dearest charm,
She says she lo'es me best of a'.

Let others love the city,

And gaudy show at sunny noon;
Gie me the lonely valley,

The dewy eve, and rising moon
Fair beaming, and streaming,

Her silver light the boughs amang;
While falling, recalling,

The amorous thrush concludes his sang:
There, dearest Chloris, wilt thou rove
By wimpling burn and leafy shaw,
And hear my vows o' truth and love,
And say thou lo'es me best of a'.

But however groundless the origin of these effusions may be, such a repertory of truly expressive and passionate love-songs does not exist in any language. The soft, the tender, the happy, the mournful, the hopeful, and the despairing, all find their perfect representation; and-as in all poems of surpassing value-they contain riches undreamt of even by their author. Each reader finds the feeling or sentiment which possesses him brought clearly out in language which he could not have used, but which, being written down, seems exactly suited to his position. As the speeches in Shakspeare not merely carry on the play and represent the feelings of the personages of the story, but by some marvellous process adapt themselves to the sentiments of thousands of people who were never in the situation contemplated by the poet, so in

G

the songs of Burns there is an inexhaustible treasury of exactly fitting expressions for every variety of thought and condition. In this respect how different from the songs of other men! The quaintnesses of the song writers of Charles's time, and the unmistakeable marks they carry of their date and origin, make them unfit vehicles for the conveyance of any sentiments but those of that particular period and state of Later attempts have the same fault; but in Burns alone, and in Shakspeare, do we find the individual lost in the species; for those great authors give us an insight more into the great passions of humanity than into the peculiarities of particular men. Othello is the passion of jealousy; Macbeth of guilty ambition; and Burns' songs are simply the passion of love.

manners.

But there is a difference between a song, in the strict definition to which it is here confined, and a ballad; though both equally are sung. A ballad is a narrative in verse, set to music, and contains avowedly the sentiments of the personages introduced, and not the singer's

own.

And how beautiful his ballads are! In them the warmth of his expressions gives only a rich colouring to the feeling, and does not break forth into a raging fire, impossible to be restrained. He does not dramatise the situation,

constituting himself the lover, but draws his charm rather from description than from his own sensations. In this he resembles the great poet of the present time, to whom at first view you would think he had less affinity than to any other. For Tennyson is the most correct, the most richly-toned, and the most majestic of poets, with more decoration of language expended on his verses than has ever before been lavished on such massiveness of thought. It is the profuse ornamentation of Benvenuto on cups of solid gold. See how he describes a landscape; not by compiling a catalogue of its component parts so many oaks, so many roses, such an extent of water, and such an amount of light and shade, but always in subordination to the human interest, always the framework and setting, but never the main object of his picture. Then mark the minuteness of his observation, and the accuracy of his knowledge of fruit and plant and flower; and how perfectly the scene is always in keeping with the sentiment. It is this that brings landscape into the Poet's domain. He ennobles it into something higher than mere landscape, not by altering its features, or enriching it with exotic trees, or birds of supernatural plumage, but by attaching a feeling to every portion of the description. instance-a youth is going to pay his first visit

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to a girl, whom he has so often heard described as good and beautiful, that he knows beforehand he is certain to fall in love with her. What is the landscape he travels through as he walks with his friend towards her home?

All the land in flowery squares

Beneath a broad and equal blowing wind,
Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Drew downward; but all else of Heaven was pure
Up to the Sun, and May from verge to verge,
And May with me from head to heel. And now
As though 'twere yesterday: as though it were
The hour just flown, that morn with all its sound
(For those old Mays had thrice the life of these)
Rings in mine ears. The steer forgot to graze,
And where the hedge-row cuts the pathway, stood
Leaning his horns into the neighbour's field,
And lowing to his fellows. From the woods
Came voices of the well-contented doves.
The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,
But shook his song together as he neared
His happy home, the ground. To left and right
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills;
The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm;
The red-cap whistled; and the nightingale
Sang loud, as though he were the bird of day.

This is a beautiful preparation for the most charming of Tennyson's shorter poems-"The Gardener's Daughter." So the key-note to many of Burns' ballads is struck at once by a vivid portraiture of the scenery where his cha