In days when daisies deck the ground, With honest joy our hearts will bound, 1 To see the coming year. On braes, when we please, then An' sing't when we hae done." These two last lines the critic thinks feeble'; but they are not feebler than many others to be found in poems by the most celebrated authors, in much less difficult measures. In the following stanza, the advantages to be derived from adversity are described with the genuine spirit of the Stoic philosophy. "Then let us cheerfu' acquiesce, Nor make our scanty pleasures less, By pining at our state; An' even should misfortunes come, They make us see the naked truth, The real guid an' ill. Though losses an' crosses Be lessons right severe, The conclusion of this epistle is eminently happy in the exhibition of a hackneyed allegory in a new form. No poet was ever better acquainted with the passion of love, with all its hopes and fears, its blisses and disappointments, than BURNS; and therefore no poet was better qualified to write the Lament of a Friend, on the unfortunate Issue of an Amour. The following stanza, in particular, is composed in the language of truth and nature. "No idly-feign'd poetic pains My sad love-lorn lamentings claim; The whole poem is in unison with this; but the limits allotted to the present work admit not of longer quotation. WE are told by the bard's latest biographer, that his mind was of a gloomy cast, as many vigorous minds have been; and we find, accordingly, that he succeeds in nothing better than in painting gloomy scenes. His ode entitled Despondency is a masterpiece in this kind of writing. After describing, in the most forcible language, his griefs and cares to be such as made life a load too heavy to be borne, he contrasts his own desponding state with that of men immersed in business; of whom he says, with philosophic truth, that even when the end, for which they toil and bustle, is denied to them, "Yet, while the busy means are ply'd, They bring their own reward." He then thinks of the hermit, who seems to have as little employment as himself, and says, "How blest the solitary's lot, Who, all forgetting, all forgot, The cavern wild with tangling roots, Beside his crystal well! Or haply, to his ev'ning thought, The ways of men are distant brought, A faint-collected dream: While praising, and raising His thoughts to Heav'n on high, As wand'ring, meand'ring, He views the solemn sky." |