False flatterer, Hope, away!

Nor think to lure us as in days of yore: We solemnize this sorrowing natal day,'

To prove our loyal truth-we can no more, And owning Heaven's mysterious sway, Submissive, low adore.

Ye honored, mighty Dead,

Who nobly perished in the glorious cause, Your KING, your Country, and her laws, From great DUNDEE, who smiling Victory led, And fell a Martyr in her arms,

(What breast of northern ice but warms!) To bold BALMERINO'S undying name,

Whose soul of fire, lighted at Heaven's high flame,

Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim:

Not unrevenged your fate shall lie,
It only lags, the fatal hour,

Your blood shall, with incessant cry,
Awake at last th' unsparing Power;
As from the cliff, with thundering course,
The snowy ruin smokes along

With doubling speed and gathering force, Till deep it, crushing, whelms the cottage in the vale ;

So Vengeance' arm, ensanguin'd, strong, Shall with resistless might assail,

Usurping Brunswick's pride shall lay, And STEWART'S wrongs and yours, with tenfold weight, repay.

Perdition, baleful child of night!
Rise and revenge the injured right

Of STEWART's royal race:

1 Precisely one month after this Jubilee meeting the Prince died at Rome.

Lead on the unmuzzled hounds of hell,
Till all the frighted echoes tell

The blood-notes of the chase!
Full on the quarry point their view,
Full on the base usurping crew,

The tools of faction, and the nation's curse!
Hark how the cry grows on the wind;
They leave the lagging gale behind,
Their savage fury, pitiless, they pour;
With murdering eyes already they devour;
See Brunswick spent, a wretched prey,
His life one poor despairing day,

Where each avenging hour still ushers in a worse!

Such havoc, howling all abroad,
Their utter ruin bring;

The base apostates to their GOD,
Or rebels to their KING.

ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT DUNDAS, ESQ., OF ARNISTON,

LATE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COURT OF SESSION.1

LONE on the bleaky hills the straying flocks Shun the fierce storms among the sheltering rocks;

Down from the rivulets, red with dashing rains, The gathering floods burst o'er the distant plains;

1 "I have two or three times in my life composed from the wish rather than from the impulse, but I never succeeded to any purpose. One of these times I shall ever remember with gnashing of teeth. 'Twas on the death of the late Lord President Dundas. My very worthy and respected friend, Mr. Alex. Wood, surgeon, urged me to pay a compliment in the way of

Beneath the blast the leafless forests groan;
The hollow caves return a hollow moan.

Ye hills, ye plains, ye forests, and ye caves,
Ye howling winds, and wintry swelling waves!

my trade to his lordship's memory. Well, to work I
went, and produced a copy of elegiac verses, some of
them I own rather commonplace, and others rather
hide-bound, but on the whole, though they were far
from being in my best manner, they were tolerable,
and would, by some, have been thought very clever.
I wrote a letter which, however, was in my very best
manner, and enclosing my poem: Mr. Wood carried
all together to Mr. Solicitor Dundas, that then was,
and not finding him at home, left the parcel for him.
His Solicitorship never took the smallest notice of the
letter, the poem, or the poet. From that time, highly
as I respect the talents of their family, I never see the
name Dundas in the column of a newspaper, but my
heart seems straitened for room in my bosom; and if
I am obliged to read aloud a paragraph_relating to
one of them, I feel my forehead flush, and my nether
lip quiver."-Burns to Alex. Cunningham, March
11th, 1791.
"The

In a letter to Advocate Hay, Burns says:enclosed poem was written in consequence of your suggestion last time I had the pleasure of seeing you. It cost me an hour or two of next morning's sleep, but did not please me, so it laid by, an ill-digested effort, till the other day I gave it a critic brush. These kinds of subjects are much hackneyed, and besides, the wailings of the rhyming tribe over the ashes of the great are cursedly suspicious, and out of all character for sincerity."

Dundas (1713-1787) was the elder brother of Lord Melville, and became Lord President in 1760. The "Mr. Solicitor Dundas " referred to above was the son of Robert Dundas, and was afterwards Lord Advocate and Lord Chief Baron. To one copy of this piece Burns appended the following note :-" The foregoing poem has some tolerable lines in it, but the incurable wound of my pride will not suffer me to correct or even peruse it." The poem was first printed in the 'Edinburgh Magazine" for 1818.

66

Unheard, unseen, by human ear or eye,
Sad to your sympathetic glooms I fly;
Where, to the whistling blast and water's roar,
Pale Scotia's recent wound I may deplore.

O heavy loss, thy country ill could bear!
A loss these evil days can ne'er repair!
Justice, the high vicegerent of her God,
Her doubtful balance eyed, and sway'd her rod:
Hearing the tidings of the fatal blow,
She sank, abandon'd to the wildest woe.

Wrongs, injuries, from many a darksome den,
Now, gay in hope, explore the paths of men:
See from his cavern grim Oppression rise,
And throw on Poverty his cruel eyes;
Keen on the helpless victim see him fly,
And stifle, dark, the feebly-bursting cry:
Mark ruffian Violence, distained with crimes,
Rousing elate in these degenerate times :
View unsuspecting Innocence a prey,
As guileful Fraud points out the erring way:
While subtile Litigation's pliant tongue
The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong:
Hark, injur'd Want recounts th' unlisten'd tale,
And much-wrong'd Misery pours the unpitied
wail!

Ye dark, waste hills, ye brown unsightly plains,
Congenial scenes, ye soothe my mournful strains:
Ye tempests, rage! ye turbid torrents, roll!
Ye suit the joyless tenor of my soul.
Life's social haunts and pleasures I resign;
Be nameless wilds and lonely wanderings mine,
To mourn the woes my country must endure—
That wound degenerate ages cannot cure.

1

SYLVANDER TO CLARINDA.'

EXTEMPORE REPLY TO VERSES ADDRESSED TO

THE AUTHOR BY A LADY, UNDER THE
SIGNATURE OF CLARINDA."

66

WHEN dear Clarinda, matchless fair,
First struck Sylvander's raptur'd view,
He gaz'd, he listened to despair,

Alas! 'twas all he dared to do.

"Clarinda" was Mrs. Agnes M'Lehose, wife of Mr. James M'Lehose, a writer in Glasgow. She was born in 1759, married in 1776, was deserted by her husband in 1780, and removed to Edinburgh in 1782. When Burns formed her acquaintance she had two surviving children. She was handsome, and wrote

verses.

Burns met her at the house of Miss Nimmo, an intimate friend of Peggy Chalmers. Mrs. M'Lehose admitted that she had long pressed Miss Nimmo to make her acquainted with Burns-"I had a presentiment (she said) that we would derive pleasure from the society of each other." The poet had intended to leave for Ayrshire on Thursday the 13th of December, and had accepted an invitation to take tea at the house of Mrs. M'Lehose on Saturday the 8th ; but on Friday night he met with an accident which detained him two months. After several letters had passed, the lady, on Christmas Eve, addressed to Burns the verses given below, signed Clarinda; and from that date they corresponded as Sylvander and Clarinda.

Burns wrote to a friend on December 30th::"You may guess of her wit by the following verses which she sent me the other day.'

"ON BURNS SAYING HE HAD NOTHING ELSE TO DO.'

"When first you saw Clarinda's charms,
What rapture in your bosom grew !