ODE TO THE MEMORY OF BURNS.
SOUL of the Poet! wheresoe'er,
Reclaim'd from earth, thy genius plume
Her wings of immortality:
Suspend thy harp in happier sphere,
And with thine influence illume
The gladness of our jubilee.
And fly like fiends from secret spell,
Discord and Strife, at BURNS's name,
Exorcised by his memory;
For he was chief of bards that swell
The heart with songs of social flame,
And high delicious revelry.
And Love's own strain to him was given,
To warble all its ecstasies
With Pythian words unsought, unwill'd,—
Love, the surviving gift of Heaven,
The choicest sweet of Paradise,
In life's else bitter cup distill'd.
Who that has melted o'er his lay
To Mary's soul, in Heaven above,
But pictured sees, in fancy strong,
The landscape and the livelong day
That smiled upon their mutual love ?—
Who that has felt forgets the song?
Nor skill'd one flame alone to fan :
His country's high-soul'd peasantry
What patriot-pride he taught !—how much
To weigh the inborn worth of man!
And rustic life and poverty
Grow beautiful beneath his touch.
Him, in his clay-built cot, the muse
Entranc'd, and show'd him all the forms,
Of fairy-light and wizard gloom,
(That only gifted Poet views,)
The Genii of the floods and storms,
And martial shades from Glory's tomb.
On Bannock-field what thoughts arouse
The swain whom BURNS's song inspires?
Beat not his Caledonian veins,
As o'er the heroic turf he ploughs,
With all the spirit of his sires,
And all their scorn of death and chains?
And see the Scottish exile tann'd
By many a far and foreign clime,
Bend o'er his home-born verse, and weep
In memory of his native land,
With love that scorns the lapse of time,.
And ties that stretch beyond the deep.
Encamped by Indian rivers wild,
The soldier resting on his arms,
In BURNS's carol sweet recals
The scenes that blessed him when a child,
And glows and gladdens at the charms
Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls.
O deem not, midst this worldly strife,
An idle art the Poet brings :
Let high Philosophy control,
And sages calm, the stream of life,
'Tis he refines its fountain-springs,
The nobler passions of the soul.
It is the muse that consecrates
The native banner of the brave,
Unfurling at the trumpet's breath,
Rose, thistle, harp; 'tis she elates
To
sweep the field or ride the wave,
A sunburst in the storm of death.
And thou, young hero, when thy pall
Is crossed with mournful sword and plume,
When public grief begins to fade,
And only tears of kindred fall,
Who but the Bard shall dress thy tomb,
And greet with fame thy gallant shade?
Such was the soldier-BURNS, forgive
That sorrows of mine own intrude
In strains to thy great memory due.
In verse like thine, oh! could he live,
The friend I mourned-the brave, the good-
Edward that died at Waterloo *!
* Major Edward Hodge, of the 7th Hussars, who fell at the head of his squadron in the attack of the Polish Lancers.
Farewell, high chief of Scottish song!
That couldst alternately impart
Wisdom and rapture in thy page,
And brand each vice with satire strong,
Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,
Whose truths electrify the sage.
Farewell! and ne'er may Envy dare
To wring one baleful poison drop
From the crushed laurels of thy bust:
But while the lark sings sweet in air,
Still may the grateful pilgrim stop,
To bless the spot that holds thy dust.
WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE.
Ar the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood,
On the wind-shaken weeds that embosom the bower,
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruined and wild is their roofless abode,
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree : And travelled by few is the grass-covered road, Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode, To his hills that encircle the sea.
Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,
One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been.
Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of nature, it drew,
From each wandering sun-beam, a lonely embrace,
For the night-weed and thorn overshadowed the place,
Where the flower of my forefathers grew.
Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all
That remains in this desolate heart!
The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall,
But patience shall never depart!
Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,
In the days of delusion by fancy combined
With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night,
And leave but a desert behind.
Be hushed, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns
When the faint and the feeble deplore ;
Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore!
Through the perils of chance, and the scowl of disdain,
May thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate!
Yea! even the name I have worshipped in vain
Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again:
To bear is to conquer our fate.
|