So when the storm the forest rends, Additional verse in Closeburn MS. Now for my friends' and brothers' sakes, Lord, send a rough-shod troop of hell ON CAPTAIN MATTHEW HENDERSON, A GENTLEMAN WHO HELD THE PATENT FOR HIS HONOURS IMMEDIATELY FROM ALMIGHTY GOD. about town," a kind-hearted, life-enjoying person, whose agreeable manners perhaps often made him welcome at tables better furnished than his own. He had been one of Burns's good-fellow friends during the time he spent in Edinburgh, and he appears as a subscriber for four copies of the second edition of our bard's poems not, however, as Captain Matthew Henderson - but as "Matthew Henderson, Esq.," the "Captain" being, we understand, a mere pet-name for the man among his friends, adopted most likely from the position he held in some convivial society. Burns speaks of the poem as 66 a tribute to the memory of a man I loved much." O DEATH! thou tyrant fell and bloody! O'er hurcheon hides, And like stockfish come o'er his studdie Wi' thy auld sides! He's gane! he's gane! he's frae us torn, Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn, Frae man exiled! Ye hills! near neibors o' the starns, rope smithy hedgehog anvil stars eagles Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns, Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens! wood-pigeon Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens, Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea! In scented bowers! Ye roses on your thorny tree, The first o' flowers! At dawn, when every grassy blade purling leaps waterfall At even, when beans their fragrance shed, I' th' rustling gale, Ye maukins whiddin' through the hares skipping glade, Come join my wail! Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood! Ye whistling plover! cloud And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood! Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals! Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels, Roar Mourn, clam'ring craiks at close o' day, landrails Tell thae far warlds, wha lies in clay Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower, In some auld tree or eldritch tower, owls frightful What time the moon, wi' silent glower stare Sets up her horn, Wail through the dreary midnight hour O rivers, forests, hills, and plains! But tales of wo? And frae my e'en the drapping rains Maun ever flow. lively receive Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year! Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear Thou, Autumn, wi' thy yellow hair, Wide o'er the naked world declare The worth we've lost! Mourn him, thou Sun, great source of light! For through your orbs he's ta'en his flight, O Henderson! the man the brother! And art thou gone, and gone for ever? And hast thou crossed that unknown river, Life's dreary bound? Like thee, where shall I find another, The world around? Go to your sculptured tombs ye great, |