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ELEGY ON

CAPTAIN MATTHEW HENDERSON.

O DEATH! thou tyrant fell and bloody!
The meikle devil wi' a woodie

Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie,

O'er hurcheon hides,

And like stockfish came o'er his studdie

Wi' thy auld sides!

He's gane! he's gane! he's frae us torn,
The ae best fellow e'er was born!
Thee, Matthew, Nature's sel' shall mourn
By wood and wild,

Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn,

Frae man exiled.

Ye hills, near neibours o' the starns,
That proudly cock your cresting cairns!
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns,
Where Echo slumbers!
Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns,
My wailing numbers!

Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens!
Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens!
Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens,
Wi' toddlin' din,

Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens,
Frae lin to lin.

Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea;
Ye stately foxgloves, fair to see;
Ye woodbines, hanging bonnilie
In scented bowers;

Ye roses on your thorny tree,
The first o' flowers.

At dawn, when every grassy blade
Droops with a diamond at its head,
At even, when beans their fragrance shed,
I' the rustling gale,

Ye maukins, whiddin' through the glade,
Come join my wail!

Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood;
Ye grouse, that crap the heather bud;
Ye curlews, calling through a clud;

Ye whistling plover;

And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood

He's gane for ever!

Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals;
Ye fisher herons, watching eels;
Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels

Circling the lake;

Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,

Rair for his sake!

Mourn, clam'ring craiks at close o' day, 'Mang fields o' flowering clover gay; And when ye wing your annual way

Frae our cauld shore,

Tell thae far warlds, wha lies in clay,
Wham we deplore.

Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower,
In some auld tree, or eldritch tower,
What time the moon, wi' silent glower,
Sets up her horn,

Wail through the dreary midnight hour
Till waukrife morn!

O rivers, forests, hills, and plains!
Oft have ye heard my canty strains :

But now,

what else for me remains

But tales of woe?

And frae my e'en the drapping rains

Maun ever flow.

Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year! Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear :

Thou Simmer, while each corny spear

Shoots up its head,

Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear
For him that's dead!

Thou, Autumn, wi' thy yellow hair,
In grief thy swallow mantle tear!
Thou, Winter, hurling through the air
The roaring blast,

Wide o'er the naked world declare

The worth we've lost!

Mourn him, thou Sun, great source of light
Mourn, Empress of the silent night!
And you, ye twinkling Starnies bright,

My Matthew mourn!

For through your orbs he's ta'en his flight,
Ne'er to return.

O Henderson! the man!-the brother!
And art thou gone, and gone for ever?
And hast thou crossed that unknown river,
Life's dreary bound?

Like thee, where shall I find another,

The world around?

Go to your sculptured tombs, ye great,
In a' the tinsel trash o' state!

But by thy honest turf I'll wait,

Thou man of worth!

And weep the ae best fellow's fate

E'er lay in earth.

R. Burns.

THE QUARREL.

(Christabel.)

ALAS! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain ;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanced, as I divine,

With Roland and Sir Leoline.

Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted-ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining-
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,

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The marks of that which once hath been.

S. T. Coleridge.

THE RECONCILIATION.

(The Same.)

'NAY, by my soul!' said Leoline.

'Ho! Bracy! the bard, the charge be thine!
Go thou, with music sweet and loud,
And take two steeds with trappings proud,
And take the youth whom thou lov'st best
To bear thy harp, and learn thy song,
And clothe you both in solemn vest,
And over the mountains haste along,
Lest wandering folk, that are abroad,
Detain you on the valley road.

And when he has crossed the Irthing flood,
My merry bard! he hastes, he hastes

Up Knorren Moor, through Halegarth Wood,
And reaches soon that castle good

Which stands and threatens Scotland's wastes.

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