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THOUGHTS

After a visit to the grave of Burns

Too frail to keep the lofty vow

That must have followed when his brow
Was wreathed-" The Vision" tells us how-
With holly spray,

He faltered, drifted to and fro,
And passed away.

Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng Our minds when, lingering all too long,

Over the grave of Burns we hung

In social grief

Indulged as if it were a wrong
To seek relief.

But, leaving each unquiet theme

Where gentlest judgments may misdeem,

And prompt to welcome every gleam

Of good and fair,

Let us beside this limpid Stream

Breathe hopeful air.

Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight;
Think rather of those moments bright

When to the consciousness of right

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His course was true,

When Wisdom prospered in his sight,

And virtue grew.

Yes, freely let our hearts expand,
Freely as in youth's season bland,
When side by side, his Book in hand,
We wont to stray,

Our pleasure varying at command
Of each sweet Lay.

How oft inspired must he have trod
These pathways, yon far-stretching road!
There lurks his home; in that Abode,
With mirth elate,

Or in his nobly-pensive mood,

The Rustic sate.

Proud thoughts that Image overawes,

Before it humbly let us pause,

And ask of Nature, from what cause,

And by what rules

She trained her Burns to win applause
That shames the Schools.

Through busiest street and loneliest glen

Are felt the flashes of his pen;

He rules 'mid winter snows, and when

Bees fill their hives;

Deep in the general heart of men

His power survives.

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What need of fields in some far clime
Where Heroes, Sages, Bards sublime,
And all that fetched the flowing rhyme
From genuine springs,

Shall dwell together till old Time

Folds up his wings?

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven
This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven

With vain endeavour,

And memory of Earth's bitter leaven,

Effaced for ever.

But why to Him confine the prayer,

When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear
On the frail heart the purest share

With all that live?—

The best of what we do and are,
Just God, forgive!

1803. 1845.

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William Wordsworth.

BURNS

WILD rose of Alloway! my thanks;

Thou 'mind'st me of that autumn noon
When first we met upon "the banks
And braes o' bonny Doon."

Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough,
My sunny hour was glad and brief;

We 've crossed the winter sea, and thou
Art withered-flower and leaf.

And will not thy death-doom be mine

The doom of all things wrought of clay? And withered my life's leaf like thine,

Wild rose of Alloway?

Not so his memory for whose sake

My bosom bore thee far and longHis, who a humbler flower could make Immortal as his song,

The memory of Burns-a name

That calls, when brimmed her festal cup,

A nation's glory and her shame,

In silent sadness up.

A nation's glory-be the rest

Forgot-she's canonized his mind,

And it is joy to speak the best

We may of humankind.

I've stood beside the cottage bed

Where the bard-peasant first drew breath;
A straw-thatched roof above his head,
A straw-wrought couch beneath.

And I have stood beside the pile,

His monument-that tells to Heaven The homage of earth's proudest isle To that bard-peasant given,

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Bid thy thoughts hover o'er that spot,
Boy-minstrel, in thy dreaming hour;
And know, however low his lot,
A poet's pride and power;

The pride that lifted Burns from earth,
The power that gave a child of song
Ascendency o'er rank and birth,
The rich, the brave, the strong;

And if despondency weigh down
Thy spirit's fluttering pinions then,
Despair-thy name is written on
The roll of common men.

There have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls, and louder lyres,

And lays lit up with Poesy's

Purer and holier fires:

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Yet read the names that know not death;
Few nobler ones than Burns are there;

And few have won a greener wreath

Than that which binds his hair.

His is that language of the heart

In which the answering heart would speak, Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, Or the smile light the cheek;

And his that music to whose tone

The common pulse of man keeps time,

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