POEMS

ROBERT BURNS.

1759-1796.

HANDSOME NELL.

TUNE-I am a Man Unmarried.

"This kind of life- the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slavebrought me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period I first committed the sin of rhyme. You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labors of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idiom - she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. ... Among her other love-inspiring qualities she sang sweetly; and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sang a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love, and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for, excepting

that he could smear sheep and cast peats, his father living in the moorlands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself." BURNS's Autobiography.

OH once 1 loved a bonnie lass,

Ay, and I love her still;

And whilst that honour warms my breast,
I'll love my handsome Nell.

As bonnie lasses I hae seen,

And mony full as braw;

But for a modest, gracefu' mien,

The like I never saw.

A bonnie lass, I will confess,

Is pleasant to the ee,

But without some better qualities,

She's no the lass for me.

well dressed

But Nelly's looks are blithe and sweet,

And, what is best of a',
Her reputation is complete,
And fair without a flaw.1

1 Variation in Mr. John Dick's MS.:

But Nelly's looks are blithe and sweet,
Good-humoured, frank, and free;

And still the more I view them o'er,
The more they captive me.

The next verso is wanting in that MS.

She dresses aye sae clean and neat,

Both decent and genteel:

And then there's something in her gait
Gars ony dress look weel.

A gaudy dress and gentle air
May slightly touch the heart;
But it's innocence and modesty
That polishes the dart.

"Tis this in Nelly pleases me,
"Tis this enchants my soul;
For absolutely in my breast
She reigns without control.

Makes

I DREAMED I LAY.

It is difficult to ascertain from Burns's own statements, even with the aid of his brother's and sister's, the order of such early attempts at rhyme as have been preserved. In arranging them here, I cannot profess to have attained more than an approximation to accuracy. There is one little song, which he says he composed at seventeen; from its style, and from its resemblance both in ideas and expressions to Mrs. Cockburn's Flowers of the Forest,' which was pub