CELEBRATED AT BRISTOL.

Still thou art blest compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee;
But Och! I backward cast my e'e
On prospects drear,

An' forward tho' I canna see,
I guess and fear."

And likewise in the "Winter Night"

"Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing!
That in the merry months o' Spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,

What comes o' thee?

Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
And close thy e'e?"

13

From the wintry woes of little birds he turns compassionately to those of men

"Oh ye who, sunk on beds of down,

Feel not a want but what yourselves create,
Think for a moment on his wretched fate,
Whom friends and fortune quite disown!
Ill satisfied, keen nature's clamorous call,
Stretch'd on his straw he lays himself to sleep,
While thro' the ragged roof and chinky wall,
Chill o'er his slumbers piles the drifty heap!"

In a similar strain are the beautiful lines to the "Mountain Daisy"—

"Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
Thou's met me in an evil hour:
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem;

To spare thee now is past my power,

Thou bonnie gem.

14

ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet!
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet
Wi' speckl'd breast,

When upward-springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north,
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,

Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawy bosom sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;

But now the share uptears thy bed
And low thou lies.

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate,
That fate is thine-no distant date:
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate
Full on thy bloom,

Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight,
Shall be thy doom!"

But Burns can descend to things most insignificant, most unpoetical, and yet charm you. Shakspere says―

"The toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

And that we may find

"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

66

CELEBRATED AT BRISTOL.

15

Burns went to hear a sermon, and saw a lady, who wore not a precious jewel in her head," but a bonnet very large and very lofty, fashionable then, but not now(laughter). By some untoward accident there had strayed upon that towering structure of millinery something that has not a local habitation nor a name in civilized society. Burns, with comic humour, traced its impudently ambitious career, and then finding good in everything, he exclaims—

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us
And foolish notion.

What airs in dress and gait wad lea'e us
And ev'n Devotion!"

Shakspere has well described an ancient fop, and Burns has sketched a modern one

"A little, upright, pert, tart, tripping wight,
And still his precious self his dear delight;
Who loves his own smart shadow in the streets
Better than e'er the fairest she he meets."

We may have seen such a specimen of frail humanity on a sunny day when butterflies are out, contemplating his fair proportions on the pavement like another Narcissus, and deeming it too much honour for the vulgar crowd of passers by to tread on his illustrious shadow

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!"

Burns describes the natural according to nature. When he attempts the supernatural it is at least in an original way. The witches in "Tam O'Shanter" are unlike the awful weird sisters of Macbeth. They are a jovial crew of dancers, who, notwithstanding their horrible accom

16

ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY

paniments, inspire more of mirth than of dread. And so, in the “Dialogue of Death and Dr. Hornbook,” and in the "Address to the Devil," solemnity of feeling yields to a jocund familiarity. In "Dr. Hornbook," Burns satirized a schoolmaster who presumed to administer medicines. Shakspere's Apothecary had "a "beggarly account of empty boxes," but not so the village doctor, whose catalogue of drugs is irresistibly. comical

“And then a doctor's saws and whittles,
Of a' dimensions, shapes, and mettles,
A' kinds o' boxes, mugs, and bottles,
He's sure to hae;

Their Latin names as fast he rattles
As A B C."

Calces o' fossils, earths, and trees;
True sal-marinum of the seas;
The Farina of beans and pease,
He has❜t in plenty;

Aqua-fontis, what you please,

He can content ye.

Forbye some new, uncommon weapons,
Urinus spiritus of capons;

Or mite-horn shavings, filings, scrapings
Distilled per se;

Sal-alkali of midge-tail clippings,
And mony mae.'

-(much laughter). Burns did not attempt to follow Milton in the great sublime, but in his "Address to Satan," after expostulating with the author of evil for the mischief he had wrought, he takes the reader by surprise with a touch of compassion, not only for the victims but for the Tempter-

"I'm wae to think upon yon den,
Ev'n for your sake!"

CELEBRATED IN BRISTOL.

17

The Vision in which, while he vowed to abandon poetry that found him poor and made him so, the Scottish Muse appeared to claim him as her own, and to bind him to her service, is poetry of the highest order—

"I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;
Or when the north his fleecy store
Drove through the sky,
I saw grim Nature's visage hoar
Struck thy young eye.

Or when the deep-green mantled earth.
Warm cherished every flow'ret's birth,
And joy and music pouring forth
In ev'ry grove,

I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth
With boundless love.

*

When youthful love, warm, blushing, strong,
Keen-shivering shot thy nerves along,
Those accents, grateful to thy tongue,
Th' adored name,

I taught thee how to pour a song,
To soothe thy flame.