From hill to dale, still more and more astray, A dire descent! beyond the power of frost ; Smoothed up with snow; and what is land unknown, In the loose marsh or solitary lake, Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. COLLINS. THE life of William Collins was a sad one; for it did not allow the fulfilment of its earlier promise. He was born A.D. 1721. Whilst yet at college he published his "Oriental Eclogues ;" and his lyrical poetry appeared when he was only twenty-six. But his mind gave way; and after lingering for a considerable time in a state of despondency and incapacity, he died A.D. 1756. His poems are marked by the prodigal exuberance of early genius, and also by som what of that obscurity and crudeness which belong to immaturity. He had a soaring imagination, and a fine power of harmony, as well as a high degree of subtlety and refinement; and his works, few as they are, constitute an original contribution to English poetry. ODE TO EVENING. If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song Thy springs, and dying gales; O nymph reserved, while now the bright-hair'd sun Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat, His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, To breathe some soften'd strain, Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, As, musing slow, I hail For when thy folding-star arising shows Who slept in buds the day, And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, The pensive pleasures sweet, Prepare thy shadowy car. Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene, By thy religious gleams. Or if chill blustering winds, or driving rain, And hamlets brown and dim-discover'd spires, The gradual dusky veil. While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, And rudely rends thy robes: So long, regardful of thy quiet rule, ODE WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1746. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By fairy hands their knell is rung, DIRGE IN CYMBELINE. Sung by Guiderius and Arviragus over Fidele, supposed to be dead. To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring No wailing ghost shall dare appear And melting virgins own their love. To deck the ground where thou art laid. When howling winds, and beating rain, The tender thought on thee shall dwell. Each lonely scene shall thee restore, BURNS. ROBERT BURNS, the son of a Scotch farmer, was born near the town of Ayr A.D. 1758. His father, an excellent man, took care that he should have that solid though unpretending education which was, even at that early time, open to the Scotch peasant. In his sixteenth year he had read some of the best English and Scotch poets; but it is probable that his genius received at least equal nourishment from the songs and legends of his native plains-such as his mother recited at her spinning-wheel. He worked as a common labourer; and addressed his earliest verses to a fellow-reaper in the same harvest-field-that "Highland Mary" whose name is indelibly associated with his own. Her early death was a calamity which affected all his subsequent years. Burns visited Edinburgh A.D. 1786, where he was received with an enthusiasm occasioned by his rare conversational powers, as well as by the admiration which his poetry had excited.. That he should have so soon left a metropolis of which he was the idol, is a proof of his independence and superiority to vanity. But he was assailable elsewhere. Unhappily the convivial habits of Edinburgh had already taught him to indulge in dissipation. His tendencies to intemperance were increased by his appointment to the office of gauger, which also harmonised but ill with his occupations as a farmer;-for he had taken a farm on the banks of the Nith. He subsequently repaired to Dumfries, his farm having failed, where, unhappily, his temptations to excess were but increased. In 1796 his constitution gave way, and he died, like Byron, in his thirty-eighth year. In poetic genius Burns has been surpassed by few in any age. Imagination, passion, intellect, pathos, sweetness,-all these gifts are in him united with a penetrating wit, a shrewd sense, and a manly strength of thought and feeling. He possessed the true lyrical inspiration; and his wide sympathies, human and poetic, gave it a true direction. His lack of classical learning probably directed his genius yet more to nature, from the touch of which it ever gained vigour; and his poetry contributed not less than that of Cowper to break down that sordid and sapless literature, based but on convention, which had sufficed to satisfy an age so cold and barren as the greater part of the eighteenth century. Burns is the most national of poets; every trait of his native land is to be found in his verse. To what height he would have reached had he added self-restraint to those moral qualities of courage, independence, and kindliness, which were eminently his, it is hard to say. His writings prove that his moral weakness in this respect received no compensating support from any reverence entertained by him for the Scotch kirk. To such weakness the public opinion of the time was but too indulgent. TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY, On turning one down with the plough. Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow`r, Thy slender stem; To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Thou bonnie gem. Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, Wi' spreckled breast, When upward-springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east. |