Mother of Burns! thy woe-nursed bard
Not always wisely thought or said;
He err'd, he sinn'd-but, oh, 'tis hard
To ban the voiceless dead!

Mother! thy doric speech hath power
The heart with passion's thrill to move;
But none could sing, in hall or bower,
Like him, thy Bard of Love.

Who dipp'd his words in lightning? Who
With thunder arm'd his stormy rhyme?
Who made his music tender, true,

Terse, terrible, sublime?

Who bade thy bard, in thrall, maintain
A freeman's port, where'er he trod?
Who taught the peasant to disdain

Proud Fashion's Minstrels? God.
Who gave the child of toil a lyre,
With living sunbeams wildly strung?
And taught his soul of living fire
Truth's universal tongue?

God.*

But with torture Faction fill'd The cup he drain'd in gloomy pride: What marvel, if the poison kill'd?

What marvel, if he died?

Few were his days, his fortunes foul;
Bravely he struggled, though not long;

* See Coleridge's Hymn to Sunrise.

SCOTSMEN TO SCOTLAND.

223

And with a poet's glowing soul,

Drew near to God in song.

For Conscience to thy poet said,
"Burns! be a martyr!" "For the truth,
I will," he cried-and bow'd his head,
And died, grey-hair'd in youth.

With little men he might not stay,
But hasted from a world unkind:

Oh, guess the worth he threw away,
By what he left behind!

And what a wreath his fame had worn,
Amid a world's immortal tears,

Had he, like England's Milton, borne
The fruit of sixty years!

But shall it of our sires be told

That they their "brother poor" forsook?
No! for they gave him more than gold;

They bought the brave man's Book!

Scotland! thy sons-and not unearn'd
This day of pleasing tears returns—
Are met to mourn thy trampled, spurn'd,
Poor, broken-hearted Burns.

And oft again, the kind, the brave,

Who sorrow's feast, like him, have shared,

Will meet, to honour in his grave

Thy glorious rustic bard.

Oh, spare his frailties !-write them not

On mute Misfortune's coffin-lid !—

Ev'n Bacon err'd, and greater Scott
Not always greatly did.

A fearful gift is flame from heav'n,
To him who bears it in his breast:
Self-fired, and blasted, but forgiv'n,
Let Robert's ashes rest.

ERIN, A DIRGE, FOR APRIL, 1847.

OH, for snow, strange April snow,
Cold and cheap! a shroud of woe
For pale dead Erin's nakedness!
Snow-clad Broom, oh, drooping broom,
Hearse of snow, of plumes a plume,
Weep over Erin coffinless!

There are colder things than snow,
Sadder things than death and woe,

Proud Rapine's cold hard-heartedness!

And that saddest, helpless pain

Which, when struck, strikes not again!
Now wordless, lifeless, coffinless.

Insect, that would'st God enthrall!
Earning nought and taking all!

ERIN, A DIRGE, FOR APRIL, 1847.

Art thou thy country's nothingness?
Man! whom that vile insect's will
Yet may torture, starve, and kill!
Remember Erin coffinless.

How men treat subjected man,
When they may do what they can,

Well knows scourged India's wofulness;
Well, Bengal, thy famish'd dead
(Victim-myriads o'er thee spread !)
Forespoke of Erin coffinless.

Oh, thou snow-clad forest-bough!

In thy sun-lit glory now,

Laugh not at death's wide wastefulness;

But lament, while brightly glows
April's noon o'er Winter snows,

A nation dead and coffinless!

225

And-oh! pale unshrouded one,
Cover'd by the heav'ns alone!

A white sheet now shall cover thee:

Help is vain, but help is nigh;

And thy friend, the pitying sky

Shall throw a cold sheet over thee.

VOL. II.

Q

226

RHYMED RAMBLES.

IN THREE PARTS.

PREFACE.

IF Mr. Housman of Lune Banks had not sent me a copy of his collection of English sonnets, I should have been the author of one sonnet only. I never liked the measure of the legitimate or Petrarchan sonnet. There is a disagreeable break in the melody, after the eighth line. That Milton felt this, is proved by the fact, that he frequently ran the eighth line into the ninth, contrary to law.

Nor can I agree with Mr. Housman, that a sonnet ending with a couplet is therefore faulty; on the contrary, a couplet at the close of a sonnet has often a fine effect. So thought and so proved Cowper, and our elder poets; and there are in Mr. Housman's collection five most harmonious, yet not Petrarchan sonnets, by Fitzadam, composed of three elegiac stanzas and a couplet, all disconnected in rhyme, but not in metre; which fully show that the measure of the sonnet, as he has managed it, is as proper for a long and serious poem as the Spenserian stanza itself.

The sonnet, I believe, has become popular in those languages only in which it is more difficult to avoid similar rhymes than to find them. The Spenserian stanza, requiring four rhymes, is quite as difficult as the Petrarchan sonnet, the latter being little more than a series of couplets and triplets; and I venture to suggest that— preceded by five lines, linked to it in melody, and concluding occasionally with an Alexandrine-or preceded by four lines only, if concluding with a triplet—the far-famed measure of Spenser is the best which the English sonneteer can employ. Of this the reader may judge for himself; as, in these sonnets, (if sonnets they are,) I have used the legitimate, the Spenserian, and other forms.