My fugitive years are all hasting away, And I must ere long lie as lowly as they, With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head, 'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can, To muse on the perishing pleasures of man; TO MARY. The twentieth year is well-nigh past, Ah, would that this might be the last! Thy spirits have a fainter flow, I see thee daily weaker grow; My Mary! 'Twas my distress that brought thee low, My Mary! Thy needles, once a shining store, For my sake restless heretofore, My Mary! For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil My Mary! But well thou playedst the housewife's part, Have wound themselves about this heart, My Mary! 1 Note to Ed. of 1803. Mr Cowper afterwards altered the last stanza in the following manner : 'The change both my heart and my fancy employs, I reflect on the frailty of man and his joys; Thy indistinct expressions seem Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme, Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, For, could I view nor them nor thee, My Mary! Partakers of thy sad decline, Such feebleness of limbs thou provest, And still to love, though prest with ill, My Mary! But ah! by constant heed I know, How oft the sadness that I show Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, My Mary! And should my future lot be cast My Mary! THE CASTAWAY. Obscurest night involved the sky, No braver chief could Albion boast He loved them both, but both in vain, Not long beneath the whelming brine, Expert to swim, he lay; Nor soon he felt his strength decline, Or courage die away; But waged with death a lasting strife. Supported by despair of life. He shouted: nor his friends had failed To check the vessel's course, But so the furious blast prevailed, That, pitiless perforce, They left their outcast mate behind, Some succour yet they could afford; The cask, the coop, the floated cord, Delayed not to bestow. But he (they knew) nor ship nor shore, Whate'er they gave, should visit more. Nor, cruel as it seemed, could he Yet bitter felt it still to die He long survives, who lives an hour And so long he, with unspent power, And ever. as the minutes flew, At length, his transient respite past, Had heard his voice in every blast, Could catch the sound no more: No poet wept him; but the page That tells his name, his worth, his age, And tears by bards or heroes shed I therefore purpose not, or dream, To give the melancholy theme But misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another's case. No voice divine the storm allayed, When, snatched from all effectual aid, We perished, each alone: But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he. SCOTCH MINOR SONG-WRITERS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE passion for song-writing which seized upon Scotland in the eighteenth century may be compared-if small things may be compared with great-with the passion for play writing which seized upon England in the latter days of Queen Elizabeth and throughout the reign of her successor. In both periods we have a supreme outcome, the plays of Shakespeare in the one case and the poetry of Burns in the other; but the excitement by which the powers of these central figures were stimulated was general. When Burns came into the world the competition was universal for the prize which fell to the lot of masterful genius, and throughout his lifetime all classes in Scotland were eager to distinguish themselves as song-writers. Ambition did not always light upon faculty, but the ambition was everywhere. If we look at the results of the lyric movement in Scotland during the eighteenth century, it is surprising to see how very various were the conditions in life of the authors and authoresses of the best songs, the songs which took root and still survive. Peers, members of the Supreme Court of Law, diplomatists, lairds, clergymen, schoolmasters, men of science, farmers, gardeners, compositors, pedlars-all were trying their hands at patching old songs and making new songs. The writer of Auld Robin Gray was a daughter of the Earl of Balcarres; the writer of Ca' the Yowes to the Knowes, which stands first in Miss Aitken's Selection of the choicest lyrics of Scotland, was an Ayrshire 'lucky' who kept an alehouse and sold whisky without a licence. And it was not merely in the south of Scotland that this passion for song-writing made itself felt; it was as active in the north of Scotland as in the south. The contributors to Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany form one of the earliest groups of song-writers in the eighteenth century. They were not called into existence by Ramsay's |