The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem, Cast wan upon it! Burns! with honour due I oft have honour'd thee. Great shadow! hide Thy face; I sin against thy native skies. 234 WRITTEN IN BURNS' COTTAGE. T HIS mortal body of a thousand days Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays, Ο MEG MERRILIES. LD MEG she was a gipsy, And lived upon the moors: Her bed it was the brown heath turf, Her wine was dew of the wild white rose, Her brothers were the craggy hills, Alone with her great family She lived as she did please. No breakfast had she many a morn, And, 'stead of supper, she would stare But every morn, of woodbine fresh And, every night, the dark glen yew And gave them to the cottagers Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen, An old red blanket cloak she wore, A ship-hat had she on: God rest her aged bones somewhere! She died full long agone! H SONNET ON AILSA ROCK. EARKEN, thou craggy ocean-pyramid, Give answer by thy voice-the seafowls' screams! When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams? When from the sun was thy broad forehead hid? Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams— The last in air, the former in the deep! First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies! Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant-size! Sue beatse Fetter to Bailey from Inverary, T biely 18th, 1818. Vol. I.213 WALKING IN SCOTLAND. HERE is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain, Where patriot battle had been fought, where glory had the gain; There is a pleasure on the heath, where Druids old have been, Where mantles grey have rustled by, and swept the nettled green; There is a joy in every spot made known in times of old, New to the feet although each tale a hundred times be told; There is a deeper joy than all, more solemn in the heart, More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart, |