Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears:
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys,
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,

Talk of thy doom without a sigh:
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's;
One of the few, the immortal names,

That were not born to die.

BURNS.

TO A ROSE, BROUGHT FROM NEAR ALLOWAY KIRK, IN

AYRSHIRE, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1822.

WILD ROSE of Alloway! my thanks:
Thou 'mindst me of that autumn noon

When first we met upon "the banks
And braes 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 whose 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
Ascendancy 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,

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;