When Love and Beauty heard the news,

The gay greenwoods amang, man, Where, gathering flowers and busking bowers, They heard the blackbird's sang, man, A vow, they sealed it with a kiss,

Sir Politics to fetter,

As theirs alone the patent-bliss

To hold a Fête Champêtre.

Then mounted Mirth, on gleesome wing,
Ower hill and dale she flew, man;

wood

Ilk wimpling burn, ilk crystal spring, meandering
Ilk glen and shaw she knew, man:
She summoned every social sprite,
That sports by wood and water,
On th' bonny banks o' Ayr to meet,
And keep this Fête Champêtre.

Cauld Boreas, wi' his boisterous crew,
Were bound to stakes like kye, man;

And Cynthia's car, o' silver fu’,

Clamb up the starry sky, man:
Reflected beams dwell in the streams,
Or down the current shatter;

The western breeze steals through the trees
To view this Fête Champêtre.

How many a robe sae gaily floats,

What sparkling jewels glance, man,

To Harmony's enchanting notes

As moves the mazy dance, man.
The echoing wood, the winding flood,
Like Paradise did glitter,
When angels met, at Adam's yett,
To hold their Fête Champêtre.

When Politics came there, to mix
And make his ether-stane, man! 1
He circled round the magic ground,

But entrance found he nane, man:

He blushed for shame, he quat his name,
Forswore it, every letter,

Wi' humble prayer to join and share

This festive Fête Champêtre.

gate

quit

THE DAY RETURNS.

TUNE-Seventh of November.

"Johnson's collection of Scots songs is going on in the third volume; and, of consequence, finds me a

1 Alluding to a superstition, which represents adders as forming annually from their slough certain little annular stones of streaked coloring, which are occasionally found, and which are in reality beads fashioned and used by our early ancestors.

consumpt for a great deal of idle metre. One of the most tolerable things I have done in that way is two stanzas I made to an air a musical gentleman of my acquaintance [Captain Riddell, of Glenriddell] composed for the anniversary of his wedding-day, which happens on the 7th of November."- Burns to Miss Chalmers, Sept. 16, 1788.

THE day returns, my bosom burns,

The blissful day we twa did meet ; Though winter wild in tempest toiled, Ne'er summer sun was half sae sweet. Than a' the pride that loads the tide,

And crosses o'er the sultry line,

Than kingly robes, than crowns and globes, Heaven gave me more-it made thee mine!

While day and night can bring delight,
Or Nature aught of pleasure give,
While joys above my mind can move,
For thee, and thee alone, I live.
When that grim foe of life below

Comes in between to make us part,
The iron hand that breaks our band,
It breaks my bliss

- it breaks my heart!

FIRST EPISTLE TO MR. GRAHAM OF FINTRY.

Burns had been told by some of his literary friends, that it was a great error to write in Scotch, seeing that thereby he was cut off from the appreciation of the English public. He was disposed to give way to this hint, and henceforth to compose chiefly in English, or at least to try his hand upon the soft lyres of Twickenham and Richmond, in the hope of succeeding equally well as he had hitherto done upon the rustic reed of Scotland. It seems to have been a great mistake. The flow of versification and the felicity of diction, for which Burns's Scottish poems and songs are remarkable, vanish when he attempts the southern strain. We see this well exemplified in a poem of the present summer, in which he aimed at the style of Pope's Moral Epistles, while at the same time he sought to advance his personal fortunes through the medium of a patron.

WHEN Nature her great master-piece designed,
And framed her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She formed of various parts the various man.

Then first she calls the useful many forth,
Plain plodding industry, and sober worth;

Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
And merchandise' whole genus take their birth;
Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And all mechanics' many-apron'd kinds.
Some other rarer sorts are wanted yet,
The lead and buoy are needful to the net;
The caput mortuum of gross desires

Makes a material for mere knights and squires;
The martial phosphorus is taught to flow;
She kneads the lumpish philosophic dough,
Then marks the unyielding mass with grave
designs,

Law, physic, politics, and deep divines;
Last, she sublimes the Aurora of the poles,
The flashing elements of female souls.
The order'd system fair before her stood,
Nature, well pleased, pronounced it very good;
But ere she gave creating labour o'er,
Half-jest, she tried one curious labour more.
Some spumy, fiery, ignis fatuus matter,
Such as the slightest breath of air might scatter;
With arch alacrity and conscious glee
(Nature may have her whim as well as we,
Her Hogarth-art perhaps she meant to shew it),
She forms the thing, and christens it- a Poet;
Creature, though oft the prey of care and sorrow,
When blest to-day, unmindful of to-morrow;
A being formed t' amuse his graver friends,
Admired and praised-and there the homage
ends:

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