Held ruling power:

I marked thy embryo tuneful flame,
Thy natal hour.

"With future hope, I oft would gaze,
Fond, on thy little early ways,
Thy rudely-caroled, chiming phrase,
In uncouth rhymes,

Fired at the simple, artless lays
Of other times.

"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 floweret's birth,
And joy and music pouring forth
In every grove,

I saw thee eye the general mirth
With boundless love.

"When ripened fields, and azure skies,
Called forth the reaper's rustling noise,
I saw thee leave their evening joys,
And lonely stalk,

To vent thy bosom's swelling rise
In pensive walk.

"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 in song,
To soothe thy flame.

"I saw thy pulse's maddening play,
Wild send thee Pleasure's devious way,
Misled by Fancy's meteor-ray,
By passion driven;

But yet the light that led astray
Was light from Heaven.

"I taught thy manners painting strains,
The loves, the wants of simple swains,
Till now, o'er all my wide domains
Thy fame extends;

And some, the pride of Coila's plains,
Become thy friends.

"Thou canst not learn, nor can I shew, To paint with Thomson's landscape glow; Or wake the bosom-melting throe,

With Shenstone's art;

Or pour, with Gray, the moving flow
Warm on the heart.

"Yet, all beneath the unrivalled rose. The lowly daisy sweetly blows

Though large the forest's monarch throws
His army shade,

Yet green the juicy hawthorn grows
Adown the glade.

"Then never murmur nor repine;
Strive in thy humble sphere to shine;
And, trust me, not Potosi's mine,
Nor king's regard,

Can give a bliss o'ermatching thine,
A rustic bard.

"To give my counsels all in one Thy tuneful flame still careful fan; Preserve the dignity of man,

With soul erect;

And trust, the universal plan
Will all protect.

"And wear thou this," she solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head:
The polished leaves, and berries red,
Did rustling play;

And, like a passing thought, she fled
In light away.1

1 Certain stanzas omitted by Burns from the printed copy of The Vision, will be found in an Appendix at the end of this volume. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, October 1852, expresses his opinion that Burns was indebted for the idea of The Vision to a copy of verses written by the "melan

A WINTER NIGHT.

"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?"-SHAKSPEARE.

The Vision leaves the poet reassured and comforted in the all-sufficing grace of the Muse; but no such feel

choly and pensive Wollaston," so far back as 1681. “Wollaston's poem was written on the occasion of his leaving, 'with a heavy heart,' as he says, his beloved Cambridge." He describes himself as sitting in his own "small apart ment."

"As here one day I sate,

Disposed to ruminate,

Deep melancholy did benumb,

With thoughts of what was past and what to come.

"I thought I saw my Muse appear,

Whose dress declared her haste, whose looks her fear;

A wreath of laurel in her hand she bore,

Such laurel as the god Apollo wore.

The piercing wind had backward combed her hair,
And laid a paint of red upon the fair;

Her gown, which, with celestial color dyed,
Was with a golden girdle tied,

Through speed a little flowed aside,
And decently disclosed her knee;

When, stopping suddenly, she spoke to me:
'What indigested thought, or rash advice,
Has caused thee to apostatize?

ing, however thoroughly once established, could long hold sway over one so sensitive as he to all the harassing problems of his lowly destiny, and to all that met his eye in humble life. At every recoil from the glowing excitement of the social hour, the love-meeting, or the triumphant essay in verse, the deep contemplative melancholy which has been remembered by so many as the reigning expression of his face, again beset him. We have a description of these darker moods of his mind in a poem, otherwise sufficiently remarkable as containing an early specimen of his composition in pure English. In the Winter Night we see a reflection of Gray and Collins, as in the Epistles we see a reflection of Ramsay.

WHEN biting Boreas, fell and doure, keen-stern Sharp shivers through the leafless bower;

Not my ill-usage, surely, made thee fly
From thy apprenticeship in poetry.'

"She paused awhile, with joy and weariness oppressed, And quick reciprocations of her breast:

She spoke again: What travel and what care

Have I bestowed! my vehicle of air

How often changed in quest of thee!'"

She concludes, like the Muse of Burns, by counselling him to remain true to her and poetry:

"Suppose the worst, thy passage rough, still I'll be kind. And breathe upon thy sails behind;

Besides, there is a port before:

And every moment thou advancest to the shore,

Where virtuous souls shall better usage find.'

Concern and agitation of my head

Waked me; and with the light the phantom fled."