On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light,

O'er the cold winter-beds of their latewaking roots

The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots;

And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps,

Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps,

1Ο

Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers,

With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers!

We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south!

For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth;

For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God,

Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod!

Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased

The wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast,

Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow,

All the way from the land of the wild Es

1 When I was fourteen years old my first schoolmaster, Joshua Coffin, the able, eccentric historian of Newbury, brought with him to our house a volume of Burns's poems, from which he read, greatly to my delight. I begged him to leave the book with me, and set myself at once to the task of mastering the glossary of the Scottish dialect at its close. This was about the first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of that of the Bible, of which I had been a close student), and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and adventures. (WHITTIER, in his Autobiographical Letter; Carpenter's Whittier, pp. 298-299.)

One day we had a call from a 'pawky auld carle' of a wandering Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns. After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave us Bonny Doon,' Highland Mary' and 'Auld Lang Syne.' He had a rich, full voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I have since listened to the same melodies from the lips of Dempster, than whom the Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter; but the skilful performance of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old farmhouse kitchen. (WHITTIER, Yankee Gypsies,' in his Prose Works, vol. i, pp. 336-337; also quoted in Carpenter's Whittier, p. 30.)