FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. JANUARY 25, 1859. His birthday. Nay, we need not speak The name each heart is beating, Each glistening eye and flushing cheek We come in one tumultuous tide, One surge of wild emotion, As crowding through the Frith of Clyde As when yon cloudless, quartered moon The swelling breasts of Ayr and Doon FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 137 The century shrivels like a scroll, The past becomes the present, And face to face, and soul to soul, We greet the monarch-peasant. While Shenstone strained in feeble flights With Corydon and Phillis, — While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's heights Who heard the wailing infant's cry, Will shake earth's starry ceiling, Whose passion-breathing voice ascends We love him, not for sweetest song, We love him, even in his wrong, His wasteful self-surrender. 138 FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. We praise him, not for gifts divine, His Muse was born of woman, His manhood breathes in every line, Was ever heart more human? We love him, praise him, just for this: In every form and feature, Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss, He saw his fellow-creature! No soul could sink beneath his love, — Not even angel blasted; No mortal power could soar above Ay! Heaven had set one living man I fling my pebble on the cairn Of him, though dead, undying; FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 139 The waning suns, the wasting globe, Shall spare the minstrel's story, The centuries weave his purple robe, The mountain-mist of glory! BIRTHDAY OF DANIEL WEBSTER. JANUARY 18, 1856. WHEN life hath run its largest round The world-tried sailor tires and droops; His farthest voyages seem but loops But when within the narrow space Some larger soul hath lived and wrought, Whose sight was open to embrace The boundless realms of deed and thought, |