And his, that music, to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time, In cot or castle's mirth or moan, In cold or sunny clime. And who hath heard his song, nor knelt O'er the mind's sea, in calm and storm, On fields where brave men' die or do,' What sweet tears dim the eyes unshed, Pure hopes, that lift the soul above, Come with his Cotter's hymn of praise, And dreams of youth, and truth, and love, With 'Logan's, banks and braes.' BURNS. And when he breathes his master-lay Imagination's world of air, And our own world, its gloom and glee, Wit, pathos, poetry, are there, And death's sublimity. And Burns-though brief the race he ran, Through care, and pain, and want, and wo, He kept his honesty and truth, His independent tongue and pen, And moved, in manhood and in youth, Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong, A love of right, a scorn of wrong, 85 A kind, true heart, a spirit high, That could not fear, and would not bow Were written in his manly eye, And on his manly brow. Praise to the bard!—his words are driven, Praise to the man! a nation stood And still, as on his funeral day, Men stand his cold earth-couch around, With the mute homage that we pay To consecrated ground.. And consecrated ground it is, The last, the hallowed home of one Who lives upon all memories, Though with the buried gone. Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines The Delphian vales, the Palestines, BURNS. Sages, with Wisdom's gariand wreathed, Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power, And warriors with their bright swords sheathed The mightiest of the hour; And lowlier names, whose humble home Are there-o'er wave and mountain come, Pilgrims, whose wandering feet have prest All ask the cottage of his birth, Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung, They linger by the Doon's low trees, But what to them the sculptor's art, His funeral columns, wreaths, and urns? Wear they not graven on the heart The name of Robert Burns? 37 BY CHARLES SPRAGUE WHEN from the sacred garden driven, An Angel left her place in heaven, And crossed the wanderer's sunless path. She led him through the trackless wild, He rends the oak-and bids it ride, And leaps triumphant o'er the grave. |