Harde as the thonder doth she drive ytte on,
Wytte scillye wympled gies ytte to hys crowne,
Hys longe sharpe speere, hys spreddynge sheelde ys gon,
He falles, and fallynge rolleth thousandes down.

War, goare-faced war, bie envie burld, arist,
Hys feerie heaulme noddynge to the ayre,
Tenne bloddie arrowes ynne hys streynynge fyste.

AN EXCELENTE BALADE OF CHARITE.

1

In Virgyne the sweltrie sun gan sheene,
And hotte upon the mees did caste his raie ;
The apple rodded from its palie greene,
And the mole peare did bende the leafy spraie,
The peede chelandri sunge the livelong daie;

'Twas nowe the pride, the manhode of the yeare,
And eke the grounde was dighte in its mose defte aumeree.

The sun was glemeing in the middle of daie,
Deadde still the aire, and eke the welken blue,
When from the sea arist in dreare arraie
A hepe of cloudes of sable sullen hue,
The which full fast unto the woodlande drewe,

Hiltring attenes the sunnis fetive face,
And the blacke tempeste swolne and gatherd up apace.

Beneathe an holme, faste by a pathwaie side,
Which dide unto Seyncte Godwine's covente lede,
A hapless pilgrim moneynge did abide,
Pore in his viewe, ungentle in his weede,
Longe

bretful of the miseries of neede,
Where from the hailstone coulde the almer flie?
He had no housen theere, ne anie covent nie.

Look in his glommed face, his sprighte there scanne;
Howe woe-be-gone, how withered, forwynd, deade !
Haste to thie church-glebe-house ashrewed manne!
Haste to thie kiste, thie onlie dortoure bedde,
Cale, as the claie which will gre on thie hedde,

Is charitie and love aminge highe elves;
Knightis and barons live for pleasure and themselves.

The gatherd storme is rype; the bigge drops falle ;
The forswat meadowes smethe, and drenche the raine;
The comyng ghastness do the cattle pall,
And the full flockes are drivynge ore the plaine ;
Dashde from the cloudes the waters flotte againe ;

The welkin opes; the yellow levynne flies;
And the hot fierie smothe in the wide lowings dies.

Liste; now the thunder's rattling clymmynge sound
Sheves slowlie on, and then embollen clangs,
Shakes the high spyre, and losst, dispended, drown'd,
Still on the gallard eare of terroure hanges ;
The winds are up; the lofty elmen swanges;

Again the levynne and the thunder poures,
And the full cloudes are braste attenes in stonen showers.

Spurreynge his palfrie oere thae watrie plaine,
The abbatte of Seyncte Godwine's convente came;
His chapournette was drented with the reine,
And his pencte gyrdle met with mickle shame;
He aynewarde tolde his bederoll at the same;

The storme encreasen, and he drew aside,
With the mist almes craver neere to the holme to bide.

His cope was all of Lyncolne clothe so fyne,
With a gold button fasten'd neere his chynne;
His autremete was edged with golden twynne,
And his shoone pyke a loverds mighte have binne;
Full well it shewn he thoughten coste no sinne:

The trammels of the palfrye pleasde his sighte,
For the horse millanare his head with roses dighte.

An almes, sir prieste! the droppynge pilgrim saide,
O let me waite within your covente dore,
Tille the sunne sheneth hie above our heade,
And the loude tempeste of the aire is oer;
Helpless and ould am I alass ! and poor;
Ne house, ne friend, ne moneie in my pouche!
All yatte I call my owne is this my silver crouche.

Varlet, reply'd the abbatte, cease your dinne;
This is no season almes and prayers to give;
Mie porter never lets a faietour in;
None touche mie rynge who not in honour live.

And now the sonne with the blacke cloudes did stryve,

And shettynge on the grounde his glairie raie,
The abbatte spurrde his steede, and eftsoones roadde awaie.

Once moe the skie was blacke, the thounder rolde ;
Faste reyneynge oer the plaine a prieste was seen;
Ne dighte full proude, ne buttoned up in golde;
His cope and jape were graie, and eke were clene ;
A Limitoure he was of order seene;

And from the pathwaie side then turned hee,
Where the pore almer laie binethe the holmen tree.

An almes, sir prieste! the droppynge pilgrim sayde,
For Sweet Seyncte Marie and your order sake.
The limitoure then loosen'd his pouche threade,
And did thereoute a groate of silver take;
The mister pilgrim dyd for halline shake.

Here take this silver, it maie eathe thie care ;
We are Goddes stewards all, nete of oure owne we bare.

But ah! unhailie pilgrim, lerve of me,
Scathe anie give a rentrolle to their Lorde,
Here take my semecope, thou art bare I see ;
Tis thyne; the seynctes will give me mie rewarde.
He left the pilgrim, and his waie aborde.

Virgynne and hallie seyncte, who sitte yn gloure,
Or give the mittee will, or give the gode man powre.

IN HAPPIENESSE, BY WILLIAM CANYNGE. Maie Selynesse on erthes boundes bee hadde? Maie yt adyghte yn human shape bee founde? Wote yee, ytt was wyth Edin's bower bestadde, Or quite eraced from the scaunce-layd grounde, Whan from the secret fontes the waterres dyd abounde? Does yt agrosed shun the bodyed waulke, Lyve to ytself, and to yttes ecchoe taulke? All hayle, Contente, thou mayde of turtle-eyne, As thie behoulders thynke thou arte iwreene, To ope the dore to Selvnesse ys thrne, And Chrystis glorie doth upponne thee sheene. Doer of the soule thynge ne hath thee seene; In caves, ynn wodes, yon woe, and dole distresse, Whoere hath thee hath gotten Selynesse.

RESIGNATION.

O God, whose thunder shakes the sky;
Whose eye this atom globe surveys;
To thee, my only rock, I fly,
Thy mercy in thy justice praise.
The mystic mazes of thy will,
The shadows of celestial light,
Are past the power of human skill,-
But what th' Eternal acts is right.

O teach me in the trying hour,
When anguish swells the dewy tear,
To still my sorrows, own thy pow'r,
Thy goodness love, thy justice fear.
If in this bosom aught but thee
Encroaching sought a boundless sway,
Omniscience could the danger see,
And mercy look the cause away.
Then why, my soul, dost thou complain ?
Why drooping seek the dark recess?
Shake off the melancholy chain,
For God created all to bless.

But ah! my breast is human still ;
The rising sigh, the falling tear,
My languid vitals' feeble rill,
The sickness of

my

soul declare. But yet, with fortitude resign'd, I'll thank th' inflicter of the blow; Forbid the sigh, compose my mind, Nor let the gush of mis’ry flow. The gloomy mantle of the night, Which on my sinking spirit steals, Will vanish at the morning light, Which God, my East, my Sun, reveals.

N N

Robert Burns, the son of William Burness, a Scottish peasant, was born on the 25th of January, 1759, in a clay built cottage, raised by his father's own hands, on the banks of the Doon, in the county of Ayr. Misfortunes thwarted his first efforts to get the means of subsistence in the world; and, in 1786, after vainly trying the business of tlax-dressing in Irvine, and of farming at Mossgiel, he had resolved to banish himself abroad, -when the extraordinary reception given to a volume of poems, which he published by the aid of a subscription, and with the hope of its profits turning out sutficient to carry him over the Atlantic, arrested this intention. Invitations to Edinburgh poured in upon the peasant poet, and to Edinburgh he went. He was received with patronizing enthusiasm. In the splendid parties of the Gordons, the Montgomerys, and the Hamiltons, he was caressed and feasted; but at the close of some brilliant day, after handing a jewelled duchess to her carriage, had to trudge his way through dingy alleys to his own obscure lodging, with his share of a deal table, a sanded floor, and a chaff bed, at eighteen-pence a week. This was the ingenious mode adopted by the Scotch aristocracy, to impress upon Burns, with every available advantage of contrast, the peculiarity of his social rank. It was a bitter lesson, and was never forgotten. Meanwhile, nothing could be more calm, more manly, or unaffected, than had been the Poet's reception of the vulgar wonder he inspired. With the profits of a second and very large edition of his poems he lent two hundred pounds to his brother Gilbert, to enable him to mend himself in the world and support his mother, and he then took the farm of Ellisland. He left behind him in disgust the cold faces which had repelled him on his second visit to Edinburgh ; but it was not without a saddened and rebuked spirit that he entered on his new toils. A situation in the Excise, of the value of thirty-five pounds a year, was sent after him, won by the intercession of some nobleman from that government, a principal member of which had already expressed, in bad verses, what was meant to be an enthusiastic appreciation of the proposed exciseman's genius. Affairs went badly with Burns at Ellisland, and he had soon little consolation left beyond the still surviving hopes of the excellent and virtuous girl whom he had married, Jean Armour. He gave up the farm and removed to Dumfries, and from this to the close of his life, he quarrelled with smugglers, gauged beer barrels, suffered all sorts of mortifications, and wrote immortal verses. A final trial was reserved for him. His political opinions having been unfavourably represented to the authorities, he was driven to a hard struggle to retain his miserable situation in the Excise, and only kept it at last on the understanding that he would strictly attend to an accompanying official instruction, that his business was to act and not to think. The business of Burns to act and not to think! On the 21st of July, 1796, after narrowly escaping a prison in the midst of his last illness, Burns died.

The person of Burns, in his youth, was tall and sinewy. “The man,” says his last and best biographer, Mr. Allan Cunningham, " differed little from the lad. . . . He had a slight stoop of the neck, betokening a holder of the plough; and a lock or so of his dark waving hair was tied carelessly behind with two casts of narrow black ribbon. His looks beamed with genius and intelligence .... his eyes were large, dark, and lustrous.” “I never saw,” said Sir Walter Scott, "such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time."

There is nothing finer than the writing of Burn, except the writing of Shakspeare. We do not in this allude to it in a poetical sense merely; but, as the writing of a man, simple, firm, and true; as the indication of a feeling of boundless generosity and of all comprehending love; as the expression of sincerity, fervid enough to lift the lowest thing to the level of the highest; as a decisive yet most graceful union of tenderness with vehemence, of trembling pity with earnest and forceful passion;-nothing is to be compared with the fraginents of the genius of Burns (for the miserable circumstances of his life enabled him to leave fragments only) except the far more widely extending genius of Shakspeare. Burns wrote verses because he could not help it. His heart was too full to suffer him to be silent. This is the great distinction of all his productions. His pulse beats in them still, as actively, as healthfully, and as vigorously, as when he first stepped upon the world, light of foot and high in hope. His eye was as true as his heart, and the graphic power of his writing is consequently not exceeded by any one,

His name and influence will endure as long as there is a hill or a stream in Scotland.