And beasts and borderers throng the way; Oxen and bleating lambs in lots,

Northumbrian boors and plaided Scots,

Men in the coal and cattle line;
From Teviot's bard and her land,
From royal Berwick's beach of sand,
From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,
So dazzling to the dreaming boy:
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of knights, but not of the round table,
Cf Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy:
'Tis what "our President," Monroe,

Has called "the era of good feeling: "
The Highlander, the bitterest foc
To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,

And put on pantaloons and coat,
And leave off cattle-stealing:
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglass in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land,
Palace, and park, and vassal-band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand

Of Rothschild or the Barings.

The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come: to-day the turbaned Turk
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cerements start)
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar-stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre-blow is given

For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven,
By Europe's craven chivalry.

You'll ask if yet the Percy lives

In the armed pomp of feudal state?

The present representatives

Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate,"

Are some half-dozen serving-men

In the drab coat of William Penn;

A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,

And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,

Spoke Nature's aristocracy;

And one, haif groom, half seneschal,

Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,

From donjon-keep to turret wall,

For ten-and-sixpence sterling.

BURNS.

TO A ROSE, BROUGHT FROM NEAR ALLOWAY KIRK, IN

AYRSHIRE, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1822.

ILD Rose of Alloway! my thanks;

Thou 'mindst me of that autumn noon

When first we met upon "the banks

And bracs o' bonny Doon."

Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough,
My sunny hour was glad and brief,
We've crossed the winter sea, and thou
Art withered-flower and leaf,

And will not thy death-doom be mine-
The doom of all things wrought of clay-
And withered my life's leaf like thine,
Wild rose of Alloway?

Not so his memory, for his sake

My bosom bore thee far and long,

His-who a humbler flower could make
Immortal as his song,

The memory of Burns-a name

That calls, when brimmed her festal cup,

A nation's glory and her shame,

In silent sadness up.

A nation's glory-be the rest

Forgot-she's canonized his mind;

And it is joy to speak the best
We may of human kind.

I've stood beside the cottage-bed

Where the Bard-peasant first drew breath; A straw-thatched roof above his head,

A straw-wrought couch beneath.

And I have stood beside the pile,

His monument-that tells to Heaven

The homage of earth's proudest isle
To that Bard-peasant given!

Bid thy thoughts hover o'er that spot,
Boy-minstrel, in thy dreaming hour;
And know, however low his lot,
A Poet's pride and power:

The pride that lifted Burns from earth,
The power that gave a child of song
Ascendency o'er rank and birth,

The rich, the brave, the strong;

And if despondency weigh down

Thy spirit's fluttering pinions then, Despair-thy name is written on

The roll of common men.

There have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls, and louder lyres,
And lays lit up with Poesy's

Purer and holier fires:

Yet read the names that know not death;
Few nobler ones than Burns are there;
And few have won a greener wreath

Than that which binds his hair.

His is that language of the heart,

In which the answering heart would speak, Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, Or the smile light the cheek;

And his that music, to whose tone

The common pulse of man keeps time,

In cot or castle's mirth or moan,

In cold or sunny clime.

And who hath heard his song, nor knelt
Before its spell with willing knee,

And listened, and believed, and felt
The Poet's mastery