In vain ye flaunt in summer's pride, ye groves; Thou crystal streamlet with thy flowery shore, Ye woodland choir that chaunt your idle loves, Ye cease to charm; Eliza is no more.

Ye heathy wastes, immix'd with reedy fens ;
Ye mossy streams, with sedge and rushes stor'd;
Ye rugged cliffs, o'erhanging dreary glens,
To you I fly-ye with my soul accord.

Princes, whose cumb'rous pride was all their worth,
Shall venal lays their pompous exit hail,
And thou, sweet Excellence! forsake our earth,
And not a Muse with honest grief bewail?

We saw thee shine in youth and beauty's pride, And Virtue's light, that beams beyond the spheres ; But, like the sun eclips'd at morning tide,

Thou left us, darkling in a world of tears.

*

The parent's heart that nestled fond in thee, That heart how sunk, a prey to grief and care; So deckt the woodbine sweet yon aged tree;

So, from it ravish'd, leaves it bleak and bare.

[“June 17th, 1790, At Braid Farm, in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, Miss Burnet of Monboddo."-Scots Magazine Obituary. The estate of Monboddo is in Kincardineshire, and there the father of this lady was born in 1714. By his marriage in 1760, to Miss Farquharson, he had one son and two daughters. The early death of Mrs. Burnet soon made Lord Monboddo a widower, and the son did not survive his mother many years. His eldest daughter married Kirkpatrick Williamson, Esq., keeper of the Outer House Rolls. Elizabeth, the youngest daughter, who forms the subject of the foregoing Elegy, was much attached to her father, and continued to keep his house till she died.

On returning to the deserted house in St. John Street, after the funeral, which took place from the summer lodging named in the

*The poem originally closed here.-J. H.

obituary, Mr. Williamson, to save the stricken parent's feelings, turned Miss Burnet's portrait with the face to the wall. When Lord Monboddo observed the picture thus reversed, he said, "Right, Williamson, let us now turn to Herodotus." His devotion to ancient literature kept him from sinking under the bereavement, and he survived his daughter nine years, dying at the age of eighty-five.

The earliest notice of the above tribute to the memory of Miss Burnet is contained in the poet's letter to Alexander Cunningham, dated 23rd January 1791. He says, "I have, these several months, been hammering at an elegy on the amiable and accomplished Miss Burnet. I have got, and can get no further than the following fragment, on which, please give me your strictures." The copy thus forwarded wanted the closing four lines-perhaps the finest stanza in the poem, which was added in a happy revising moment. A still earlier copy, now possessed by Henry Probasco, Esq., Cincinnati, Ohio, wants not only the closing stanza, but the two introductory ones which are in the Cunningham copy.]

LAMENT OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS,

ON THE APPROACH OF SPRING.

(EDINBURGH ED., 1793.)

Now Nature hangs her mantle green
On every blooming tree,

And spreads her sheets o' daisies white.

Out o'er the grassy lea:

Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams,

And glads the azure skies;

But nought can glad the weary wight
That fast in durance lies.

sloe

Now blooms the lily by the bank,
The primrose down the brae;
The hawthorn's budding in the glen,
And milk-white is the slae:
The meanest kind in fair Scotland

May rove thae sweets amang ;
But I, the Queen of a' Scotland,
Maun lie in prison strang.

I was the Queen o' bonie France,
Where happy I hae been;
Fu' lightly rase I in the morn,
As blythe lay down at e'en :
And I'm the sov'reign of Scotland,
And mony a traitor there;
Yet here I lie in foreign bands,
And never-ending care.

But as for thee, thou false woman,
My sister and my fae,

Grim Vengeance yet shall whet a sword

That thro' thy soul shall gae :

The weeping blood in woman's breast

Was never known to thee;

Nor th' balm that drops on wounds of woe
Frae woman's pitying e'e.

!

My son my son! may kinder stars

Upon thy fortune shine;

And may those pleasures gild thy reign,

That ne'er wad blink on mine!

God keep thee frae thy mother's faes,

Or turn their hearts to thee:

And where thou meet'st thy mother's friend, Remember him for me!

O! soon, to me, may Summer suns
Nae mair light up the morn!
Nae mair to me the Autumn winds
Wave o'er the yellow corn?
And, in the narrow house of death,
Let Winter round me rave;

And the next flow'rs that deck the Spring,
Bloom on my peaceful grave!

[Burns was justly proud of these verses, which were composed prior to the close of February 1791. He then enclosed them with some other pieces to Dr. Moore, and told him that he began this ballad while he was busy with the Percy Reliques. He sent it about the same time to Mrs. Graham of Fintry, remarking thus concerning it, "Whether it is that the story of our Mary Queen of Scots has a peculiar effect on the feelings of a poet, or whether I have in the enclosed ballad succeeded beyond my usual poetic success, I know not, but it has pleased me beyond any effort of my Muse for a good while past."]

(On 25th April, 1791, the poet addressed a letter to Lady Winifred Maxwell Constable, thanking her for the present of a valuable snuffbox, bearing on its lid a portrait of the unfortunate Mary, and along with the letter sent her a copy of this poem. Allan Cunningham says the poem was written at the request of this lady. Dr. Waddell points out that the reader will find a very beautiful counterpart of this Lament in Beranger's "Adieux de Marie Stuart," beginning:

Adieu, charmant pays de France,

Que je dois tant cherir!

Berceau de mon hereuse enfance,

Adieu te quitter est mouir !"-J. H.)

THERE'LL NEVER BE PEACE TILL JAMIE COMES HAME.

(JOHNSON'S MUSEUM, 1792.)

By yon Castle wa', at the close of the day,
I heard a man sing, tho' his head it was grey;
And as he was singing, the tears doon came,-
There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.

The Church is in ruins, the State is in jars,
Delusions, oppressions, and murderous wars,

We dare na weel say't, but we ken wha's to blame,— There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.

My seven braw sons for Jamie drew sword,
But now I greet round their green beds in the weep

yerd;

churchyard

It brak the sweet heart o' my faithfu' auld dame,-
There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.

Now life is a burden that bows me down,
Sin I tint my bairns, and he tint his crown;
But till my last moments my words are the

same,

lost

children)

There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.

[On 11th March 1791, the poet transcribed this song in a letter to his friend Alexander Cunningham of Edinburgh, as one of his recent compositions for Johnson's work, and thus wrote :-"If you like the air and the stanzas hit your fancy, you cannot imagine, my dear friend, how much you would oblige me, if by the charms of your delightful voice you would give my honest effusion to 'the memory of joys that are past' to the few friends whom you indulge in that pleasure."

SONG-OUT OVER THE FORTH.

(JOHNSON'S MUSEUM, 1796.)

OUT over the Forth, I look to the north;
But what is the north and its Highlands to me?

The south nor the east gie ease to my breast,
The far foreign land, or the wide rolling sea.

give

But I look to the west when I gae to rest,
That happy my dreams and my slumbers may be;

go

For far in the west lives he I loe best,

love

The man that is dear to my babie and me.