HIGHLAND MARY.

Inscribed to JOHN D. ROSS, Esq.,

AUTHOR OF "SCOTTISH POETS IN AMERICA," EDITOR OF "ROUND BURNS'S GRAVE," "BURNSIANA," etc.

FAIR flower who gav'st thy leal heart to the Bard
That oft in noblest lays of thee has sung
Melodious as thine own soft Gaelic tongue,
And cherished thee with sacredest regard.
Pure as the sparkling dew on beauteous rose,

And chaste as snow on lofty Cruachan's brow
Thy name and fame; an influence good wert thou
That breathed sweet fragrance after thy life's close.
His hymn divine to thy "departed shade "

Poured forth that memorable Autumn morn,
The day thou wert from his fond bosom torn,
Lives soul-inspired and never shall it fade.
The ghoul who thy name hallowed dare defame
Should read the hymn, then melt in burning shame.

DUNCAN MACGREGOR CRERAR.

AT THE TOMB OF HIGHLAND MARY.

By COLIN RAE BROWN.

Ir is the great privilege of men whose names and works are immortal to have immortalised those also with whom they have been most intimately associated. We rarely speak of Dante without mentioning his Beatrice. The name of Petrarch seldom crosses our lips without that of Laura being also spoken. And while the universal fame of Burns lives enrolled upon the annals of everlasting memory, Highland Mary can never die—can never be forgotten. Side by side with that of Scotland's Ploughman Poet, her name will stand emblazoned upon the time-stained scroll of immortality. And why not? Had there been no Highland Mary, would not the grand heart utterings, the sweet soul-moving sentiments which she alone inspired, have remained unwritten? Should we ever have read that perhaps most beautiful of odes addressed to " Highland Mary?"-have ever been moved to tears by those nobly passionate lines “To Mary in Heaven?" which fall upon you like the wailing of the saddened soul from which they were wrung. Love is the grand-parent of Genius. Love begets inspiration; inspiration begets Genius. We can never begrudge, then, the honour, the fame, and the immortality which belongs by right to those by whom the great are inspired.

A few days ago I read these words, wrought in plain black letters upon the simple monument of white stone erected in the Old West Kirkyard at Greenock to the memory of her to whom Burns was dear. As I stood there, with the evening shadows falling around me, amid the time-worn tombs, whose inscriptions were, in many instances, almost wholly obliterated, my thoughts momentarily wandered away. They took me back to that hour in which I had been first able to read and understand for myself. They dwelt for the space of a few seconds upon the old green-covered volume of his poems I had then used-upon the thumbmarked, dog-eared page containing those verses which had been, and always would be, my favourite duet

and so on.

"Ye banks and braes and streams around
The Castle o' Montgomery "

How well I know every word of that poem ? As my thoughts returned, and I felt my feet pressing the sod under which lay the dust of her by whom they were inspired, the concluding lines-immortal in the very grandeur of their simplicity-rose instinctively to my lips

"Oh, pale, pale now those rosy lips
I oft hae kissed sae fondly!
And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on me sae kindly;

And mouldering now in silent dust
That heart that lo'ed me dearly!

But still within my bosom's core

Shall live my Highland Mary."

With these words green in our memory, have we not an excuse for asking ourselves whether the life of Robert Burns,

whether its end would not have been different had Highland Mary lived? Have we not a reason for believing that of all his "attachments," this one was the purest, the most sincere, and the most durable? Of a notoriously susceptible nature, the poet was easily impressed. In his general admiration for the beautiful, as represented in either the female mind or form, he was doubtlessly, oftentimes carried away. But to be impressed, infatuated, carried away, is not to love with so great a sincerity, such a depth of passion as alone could call forth such lines as I have quoted. The following description of the sweet dairy maid of Coilsfield is taken from a well-known and excellent authority :

"But superior in modesty and intelligence to the women he had hitherto known, her character must have commanded his respect as well as his love."

Respect and Love. Are they not twin sisters? Must they not ever go hand in hand? Can one die and the other remain? Let us ask ourselves those questions almost in the same breath as we ask whether Burns respected all the women he had known prior to his meeting with Mary Campbell? Even if she had lived, do we doubt for one single shadow of a moment, that he would have married Jean Armour, though legally not bound to do so? No? Robert Burns's honour was not such as was measured out in the scales of legal responsibility, but in those of moral conviction.

He would have married Jean Armour; yes!—but would she have been the beacon, the guiding star to warn him from the rocks of destruction, against which he was wont to drift? While Highland Mary lived, would not hers have been the imaginary hand that, with its soft, gentle, though firm, touch, would have deterred and checked him in those moments of wild and reckless impetuosity?

When she died, when that hand was cold

"And closed for aye the sparkling glance "

the young sweet being crushed out in the very springtime of its existence, was not the nature of Burns just such an one as would chafe and grow restless and heedless under the cruel and untimely fate that had torn his "Highland Mary" from earth? But did his love die-did not his heart still call, his eyes still look up through a mist of tears, "To Mary in Heaven?"