THOUGHTS SUGGESTED THE DAY AFTER SEEING THE GRAVE OF BURNS ON THE BANKS OF NITH, NEAR THE POET'S RESIDENCE. 00 frail to keep the lofty vow That must have followed when his brow Was wreathed-The Vision' tells us how- With holly spray, He faltered, drifted to and fro, And passed away. Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng Over the grave of Burns we hung, In social grief— Indulged as if it were a wrong To seek relief. But, leaving each unquiet theme Where gentlest judgments may misdeem, And prompt to welcome every gleam Of good and fair, Let us beside this limpid Stream Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight; When Wisdom prospered in his sight Yes, freely let our hearts expand, When side by side, his Book in hand We wont to stray, Our pleasure varying at command Of each sweet Lay. How oft inspired must he have trode Or in his nobly-pensive mood, Proud thoughts that Image overawes, And ask of Nature, from which cause She trained her Burns to win applause Through busiest street and loneliest glen He rules mid winter snows, and when Deep in the general heart of men What need of fields in some far clime Shall dwell together till old Time Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven And memory of Earth's bitter leaven, But why to him confine the prayer, When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear With all that live?- The best of what we do and are, HOOTING TO THE OWLS. 'HERE was a boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs THER And islands of Winander! Many a time At evening, when the earliest stars began Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him.-And they would shout With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received This boy was taken from his mates, and died Where he was born and bred: the churchyard hangs Upon a slope above the village school: And through that churchyard when my way has led A long half-hour together I have stood YEW-TREES. HERE is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, THERE Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore: Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands Of Umfraville and Percy ere they marched Of vast circumference and gloom profound To be destroyed. But worthier still of note Upcoiling, and inveterately convolved; Not uninformed with Phantasy, and looks Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked May meet at noon-tide ;--Fear and trembling Hope, And Time the Shadow ;-there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o'er I DAFFODILS. WANDERED lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils, Continuous as the stars that shine The waves beside them danced, but they A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company; I gazed, and gazed, but little thought For oft, when on my couch I lie |