sounds; not perhaps in the description of the sounds of voluble bells, and lowing herds, and surging seas, but, the sounds which, as George Eliot says, "lie on the other side of silence." "He could hear the squirrel's heart beat." If to other poets it has been given to behold "the light that never was on land or sea," to him it was given to hear voices in the depths of woods and the brooding of the marshes which no ear but his had ever caught. To his quickened hearing the indistinguishable vibrations of the wings of bees made "loud fanfare." The rustling and whispering of little green leaves awoke his "Sunrise" from sleep. How exquisite this description from "Corn":

"The copse-depths into, little noises start
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart."

Lanier is the poet of passionate purity. He is the Laureate of the White Cross movement of a later time-the knightly order of Sir Galahads whose "strength is as the strength of ten," because their hearts are pure. Woman's protest against the burning injustice of public opinion which man has established was never more finely uttered than in the lines

"Must woman scorch for a single sin
Which her betrayers may revel in ?”

In an age of materialism, he has sung of the finer things of the spirit. To a generation rushing madly after wealth, hardly pausing for a moment around an open grave, making “business a battle," wedging the poor—

"Against an inward opening door
That pressure tightens evermore,"

and sound the cry,

"Alas, for the poor to have some part,

In yon sweet living land of art."

His song and his life are a splendid lesson for this needy time. The lesson that to be and to know are greater than to get and to have.

He has enriched poetry with the revelation of aspects of nature hitherto unsung. He was the first that ever burst into that silent sea, "the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn." He is the first who has sung in lasting melody the waving of the corn. His heart was open to all of Nature's revelation as the morning glory to the sun. A mere glance at the titles of the poems will show how many objects touched the springs of affection within him. Wherever he went-Tampa, Brunswick, Chester-he "carried starry stuff about his wings," and has enriched his temporary homes with the pollen of his songs. The "peddler bee," the "gospelling glooms of live oaks," the "marsh plants, thirsty-cupped for rain," the "prayer of leaves, with myriad palms upturned in air"; the mockingbird, "trim Shakespeare of the tree" who "summed the woods in song"-these are but a few of the rare felicities of phrase which glow through the little green-gilt volume of poems like the "globe of gold" that on a Florida Sunday studded bright the green heavens of the orange-groves.

The story of his life is a heritage for all time. The undaunted faith that in the face of every practical discouragement bade him take flute and pen for sword and staff, and give his allegiance to the twin arts he had so long worshiped the manly and uncomplaining struggle

against poverty and unrecognition-the almost airy heroism with which he looked Death in the eye, calling it the "rich stirrup cup of time" that should send him glad on his journey to the undiscovered country-all this is a record that the world will not willingly let die. "The idea of his life shall sweetly creep into men's study of imagination.”

Summing up all these qualities, and thinking of others that can not now be named, it is not too much to say in the words of Chief Justice Bleckley, himself a poet, that "his fair fame which is now a mere germ may one day grow to be a tall cedar in the poetic Lebanon."-Walter B. Hill.

BURNS.

1759-1796. These thirty-seven years represent the brief period of the mortal life of Robert Burns. But what figures shall limit the duration of his influence!

There is music and music. There is the music of the artist, which, awakened from the instrument by deft fingers touched, goes forth to meet the loud applause of listening multitudes. And there is the music that wells untutored from the poet's heart, which is to Nature's heart attuned, and rising on the morning's wings, mounts upward toward the infinite source of beauty and of song.

Burns was the poet of nature and of daily life, and the things of life bring his memory constantly before us.

Some of you have walked abroad across the fields, and watching how the daisies bloom and fall beneath the heedless plowman's tread, and thinking of the ephemeral glory of man, have said:

"Stern ruin's plowshare drives elate
Full on thy bloom."

Or watching vanity, which could not see upon itself the creeping folly that was to others plain, have said:

"O wad some pow'r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us."

Or mayhap some of us have stood beside the grave where slept a dear one-mother, daughter, sister—and turning back to life's care-ladened way, thinking of its sad brevity, have taken to our hearts the words:

"Like a passing thought she fled

In light away."

And in this present time, when greed of gain seems sometimes to obscure all else, it may not be amiss to recall the legitimate use of acquisition as Burns sets it forth: "Not for to hide it in a hedge

Nor for a train-attendant,
But for the glorious privilege

Of being independent."

I will not say that Burns' faults were excusable. But perhaps his realization of his own weaknesses made him more tender toward erring, sinning humanity.

From out the heather of the Scottish hills, from out the ripening grain that nodded in the golden sunlight of the Scottish vales; aye, from between the very plowshares that furrowed up the fields of toil, there rose a voice full of the beauty of poetry and song. Not often shrill with. the clarion tones of struggling freedom's call; not blaring with the loud alarms of war; nor tainted with the raucous eloquence of passionate appeal, but sweet with a message to human hearts of nature, humanity and love.

As the lark at morning leaves its nest, and shaking from its wings the drowsy dreaming of the night, soars up to meet the approaching dawn, and pours forth from its tuneful throat upon the ears of the waking world a song untaught save by its mother nature, yet passing all the strains of human melody; so from out the thatched-roofed cottage nestling near the Doon came Robert Burns, and rising on the wings of song, poured forth a melody that has reached the ears of a listening world and set his hearers to weeping in very sympathy with him, and yet to smiling through their tears. His song was as gentle as the winds that rustled adown the heathered slopes of Scotia's hills, as rippling as the waters that babbled over the brooklet's stony bed, or flowed beneath the bridge or murmured softly along the "banks and braes o' bonnie Doon."

The two striking characteristics which I would especialy notice in Burns are his sweetness and his humanity.

Two great masters of humor and pathos come to my mind together-Burns and Dickens. As wide apart as the poles in training, surroundings and methods, the one living in the midst of nature and drinking in the inspiration of the hills and fields and streams, the other watching human nature in the crowded marts and busy walks of city life, yet both proclaimed alike one message-the common brotherhood of man. Each in his way brings home to us that, however wide apart we may be in circumstances or in spheres of action, there are great heart-throbs of hope and fear, of joy and sorrow, of love and hate, of anticipation and disappointment common to us all; and that at last we are brothers in a common humanity; that the babe who croons beneath the coronet and whose cradle is shaded by silken curtains, and the babe who is hushed to sleep in a