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Offspring of Birmingham's creative art,
Now from the faithful button-holes depart.
To sudden twitch the rending stitches yield,
And Enterprise again essays the field.
So, when a few fleet years of his short span
Have ripened this dire passion in the man,
When thousand after thousand takes its flight
In the short circuit of one wretched night,
Next shall the honours of the forest fall,
And ruin desolate the chieftain's hall;
Hill after hill some cunning clerk shall gain;
Then in a mendicant behold a thane!

JAMES HOGG.

JAMES HOGG, generally known by his poetical name of The Ettrick Shepherd,' was perhaps the most creative and imaginative of the uneducated poets. His fancy had a wide range, picturing in its flights scenes of wild aerial magnificence and beauty. His taste was very defective, though he had done much to repair his early want of instruction. His occupation of a shepherd, among solitary hills and glens, must have been favourable to his poetical enthusiasm. He was not, like Burns, thrown into society when young, and forced to combat with misfortune. His destiny was unvaried, until he had arrived at a period when the bent of his genius was fixed for life. Without society during the day, his evening hours were spent in listening to ancient legends and ballads, of which his mother (like Burns's) was a great reciter. This nursery of imagination he has himself beautifully described :

O list the mystic lore sublime
Of fairy tales of ancient time!
I learned them in the lonely glen,
The last abodes of living men,
Where never stranger came our way
By summer night, or winter day;
Where neighbouring hind or cot was none-
Our converse was with heaven alone
With voices through the cloud that sung,
And brooding storms that round us hung.
O lady, judge, if judge ye may,
How stern and ample was the sway
Of themes like these when darkness fell,
And gray-haired sires the tales would tell!
When doors were barred, and elder dame
Plied at her task beside the flame
That through the smoke and gloom alone
On dim and umbered faces shone-
The bleat of mountain goat on high,
That from the cliff came quavering by;
The echoing rock, the rushing flood,
The cataract's swell, the moaning wood;
The undefined and mingled hum-
Voice of the desert never dumb!
All these have left within this heart
A feeling tongue can ne'er impart ;
A wildered and unearthly flame,
A something that's without a name.

Hogg was descended from a family of shepherds, and born, as he alleged (though the point was often disputed) on the 25th January (Burns's birthday), in the year 1772. When a mere child he was put out to service, acting first as a cow-herd, until capable of taking care of a flock of sheep. He had in all about half a year's schooling. When eighteen years of age he entered the service of Mr Laidlaw, Blackhouse. He was then an eager reader of poetry and romances, and he subscribed to a circulating library in Peebles, the miscellaneous contents of which he perused with the utmost avidity. He was a remarkably fine-looking young man, with a profusion of light-brown hair, which he wore coiled up

under his hat or blue bonnet, the envy of all the country maidens. An attack of illness, however, brought on by over-exertion on a hot summer day, completely altered his countenance, and changed the very form of his features. His first literary effort was in song-writing, and in 1801 he published a small volume of pieces. He was introduced to Sir Walter Scott by his master's son, Mr William Laidlaw, and assisted in the collection of old ballads for || the Border Minstrelsy. He soon imitated the style of these ancient strains with great felicity, and published another volume of songs and poems under the title of The Mountain Bard. He now embarked in sheep-farming, and took a journey to the island of saved as a shepherd, or by his publication, was lost Harris on a speculation of this kind; but all he had in these attempts. He then repaired to Edinburgh, and endeavoured to subsist by his pen. A collection his second was a periodical called The Spy; but it of songs, The Forest Minstrel, was his first effort: was not till the publication of the Queen's Wake, in 1813, that the shepherd established his reputation as an author. This 'legendary poem' consists of a collection of tales and ballads supposed to be sung to Mary Queen of Scots by the native bards of Scotland assembled at a royal wake at Holyrood, in order that the fair queen might prove

The wondrous powers of Scottish song.

The design was excellent, and the execution so varied and masterly, that Hogg was at once placed among the first of our living poets. The different productions of the native minstrels are strung together by a thread of narrative so gracefully written in many parts, that the reader is surprised equally at the delicacy and the genius of the author. At the conclusion of the poem, Hogg alludes to his illustrious friend Scott, and adverts with some feeling to an advice which Sir Walter had once given him, to abstain from his worship of poetry.

The land was charmed to list his lays;
It knew the harp of ancient days.
The border chiefs that long had been
In sepulchres unhearsed and green,
Passed from their mouldy vaults away
In armour red and stern array,
And by their moonlight halls were seen
In visor, helm, and habergeon.
Even fairies sought our land again,
So powerful was the magic strain.

Blest be his generous heart for aye!
He told me where the relic lay;
Pointed my way with ready will
Afar on Ettrick's wildest hill;
Watched my first notes with curious eye,
And wondered at my minstrelsy:
He little weened a parent's tongue
Such strains had o'er my cradle sung.
But when to native feelings true,
I struck upon a chord was new;
When by myself I 'gan to play,
He tried to wile my harp away.
Just when her notes began with skill,
To sound beneath the southern hill,
And twine around my bosom's core,
How could we part for evermore?
'Twas kindness all-I cannot blame-
For bootless is the minstrel flame :
But sure a bard might well have known
Another's feelings by his own!

Scott was grieved at this allusion to his friendly counsel, as it was given at a time when no one dreamed of the shepherd possessing the powers that he displayed in the Queen's Wake.' Various works

now proceeded from his pen-Mador of the Moor, a poem in the Spenserian stanza; The Pilgrims of the Sun, in blank verse; The Hunting of Budlewe, The Poetic Mirror, Queen Hynde, Dramatic Tales, &c. Also several novels, as Winter Evening Tales, The Brownie of Bodsbeck, The Three Perils of Man, The Three Perils of Woman, The Confessions of a Sinner, &c. &c. Hogg's prose is very unequal. He had no skill in arranging incidents or delineating character. He is often coarse and extravagant; yet some of his stories have much of the literal truth and happy minute painting of Defoe. The worldly schemes of the shepherd were seldom successful. Though he had failed as a sheep farmer, he ventured again, and took a large farm, Mount Benger, from the Duke of Buccleuch. Here he also was unsuccessful; and his sole support, for the latter years of his life, was the remuneration afforded by his literary labours. He lived in a cottage which he had built at Altrive, on a piece of moorland (seventy acres) presented to him by the Duchess of Buccleuch. His love of angling and field-sports amounted to a passion, and when he could no longer fish or hunt, he declared his belief that his death was near. In the autumn of 1835 he was attacked with a dropsical complaint; and on the 21st November of that year, after some days of insensibility, he breathed his last as calmly, and with as little pain, as he ever fell asleep in his gray plaid on the hill-side. His death was deeply mourned in the vale of Ettrick, for all rejoiced in his fame; and notwithstanding his personal foibles, the shepherd was generous, kind-hearted, and charitable far beyond his means.

In the activity and versatility of his powers, Hogg resembled Allan Ramsay more than he did Burns. Neither of them had the strength of passion or the grasp of intellect peculiar to Burns; but, on the other hand, their style was more discursive, playful, and fanciful. Burns seldom projects himself, as it were, out of his own feelings and situation, whereas both Ramsay and Hogg are happiest when they soar into the world of fancy or the scenes of antiquity. The Ettrick Shepherd abandoned himself entirely to the genius of old romance and legendary story. He loved, like Spenser, to luxuriate in fairy visions, and to picture scenes of supernatural splendour and beauty, where

The emerald fields are of dazzling glow,
And the flowers of everlasting blow.

His 'Kilmeny.' is one of the finest fairy tales that ever was conceived by poet or painter; and passages in the Pilgrims of the Sun' have the same abstract remote beauty and lofty imagination. Burns would have scrupled to commit himself to these aërial phantoms. His visions were more material, and linked to the joys and sorrows of actual existence. Akin to this peculiar feature in Hogg's poetry is the spirit of most of his songs-a wild lyrical flow of fancy, that is sometimes inexpressibly sweet and musical. He wanted art to construct a fable, and taste to give due effect to his imagery and conceptions; but there are few poets who impress us so much with the idea of direct inspiration, and that poetry is indeed an art 'unteachable and untaught.'

Bonny Kilmeny.

[From the Queen's Wake.']

Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen;
But it wasna to meet Duneira's men,
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see,
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
It was only to hear the yorlin sing,
And pu' the cress-flower round the spring;

The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye,
And the nut that hang frae the hazel tree;
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny look o'er the wa',
And lang may she seek i' the greenwood shaw;
Lang the laird of Duneira blame,
And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame!
When many a day had come and fled,
When grief grew calm, and hope was dead,
When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung,
When the beadsman had prayed, and the dead-bell

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Late, late in a gloamin, when all was still,
When the fringe was red on the western hill,
The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane,
The reek o' the cot hung over the plain
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane;
When the ingle lowed with an eiry leme,
Late, late in the gloamin, Kilmeny came hame!
'Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have been?
Lang hae we sought baith holt and dean;
By linn, by ford, and greenwood tree,
Yet you are halesome and fair to see.
Where gat ye that joup o' the lily sheen?
And these roses, the fairest that ever were seen?
That bonny snood of the birk sae green?
Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?'
But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face;
Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace,
As still was her look, and as still was her ee,
Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea.
As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea,
For Kilmeny had been she knew not where,
Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare;
Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew,
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a land where sin had never been.

And in that waik there is a wene,
In yon greenwood there is a waik,

And in that wene there is a maike
That neither hath flesh, blood, nor bane;
And down in yon greenwood he walks his lane!
In that green wene Kilmeny lay,
Her bosom happed wi' the flowrets gay;
But the air was soft, and the silence deep,
And bonny Kilmeny fell sound asleep;
She kend nae mair, nor opened her ee,
Till waked by the hymns of a far countrye,
She wakened on couch of the silk sae slim,
All striped wi' the bars of the rainbow's rim;
And lovely beings round were rife,
Who erst had travelled mortal life.
They clasped her waist and her hands sae fair,
They kissed her cheek, and they kamed her hair,
And round came many a blooming fere,
Saying, Bonny Kilmeny, ye're welcome here!'

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They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away, And she walked in the light of a sunless day; The sky was a dome of crystal bright, The fountain of vision, and fountain of light; The emerald fields were of dazzling glow, And the flowers of everlasting blow. Then deep in the stream her body they laid, That her youth and beauty never might fade; And they smiled on heaven when they saw her lie In the stream of life that wandered by ; And she heard a song, she heard it sung, She kend not where, but sae sweetly it rung, It fell on her ear like a dream of the morn. 'O! blest be the day Kilmeny was born! The sun that shines on the world sae bright, A borrowed gleid frae the fountain of light;

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Then Kilmeny begged again to see

The friends she had left in her own countrye,
To tell of the place where she had been,
And the glories that lay in the land unseen.
With distant music, soft and deep,
They lulled Kilmeny sound asleep;
And when she awakened, she lay her lane,
All happed with flowers in the greenwood wene.
When seven lang years had come and fled,
When grief was calm and hope was dead,
When scarce was remembered Kilmeny's name,
Late, late in the gloamin Kilmeny came hame!
And oh, her beauty was fair to see,
But still and steadfast was her ee;
Such beauty bard may never declare,
For there was no pride nor passion there;
And the soft desire of maiden's een,
In that mild face could never be seen.
Her seymar was the lily flower,

And her cheek the moss-rose in the shower;
And her voice like the distant melodye,
That floats along the twilight sea.
But she loved to raike the lanely glen,
And keeped afar frae the haunts of men,
Her holy hymns unheard to sing,

To suck the flowers and drink the spring,
But wherever her peaceful form appeared,
The wild beasts of the hill were cheered;
The wolf played blithely round the field,
The lordly bison lowed and kneeled,
The dun deer wooed with manner bland,
And cowered aneath her lily hand.
And when at eve the woodlands rung,
When hymns of other worlds she sung,
In ecstacy of sweet devotion,

Oh, then the glen was all in motion;
The wild beasts of the forest came,
Broke from their bughts and faulds the tame,
And goved around, charmed and amazed;
Even the dull cattle crooned and gazed,
And murmured, and looked with anxious pain
For something the mystery to explain.
The buzzard came with the throstle-cock;
The corby left her houf in the rock;
The blackbird alang wi' the eagle flew;
The hind came tripping o'er the dew;
The wolf and the kid their raike began,

And the tod, and the lamb, and the leveret ran;
The hawk and the hern attour them hung,
And the merl and the mavis forhooyed their young;
And all in a peaceful ring were hurled:
It was like an eve in a sinless world!

When a month and a day had come and gane,
Kilmeny sought the greenwood wene,
There laid her down on the leaves so green,
And Kilmeny on earth was never mair seen!

To the Comet of 1811.

How lovely is this wildered scene,
As twilight from her vaults so blue
Steals soft o'er Yarrow's mountains green,
To sleep embalmed in midnight dew!
All hail, ye hills, whose towering height,
Like shadows, scoops the yielding sky!
And thou, mysterious guest of night,
Dread traveller of immensity!

Stranger of heaven! I bid thee hail!
Shred from the pall of glory riven,
That flashest in celestial gale,

Broad pennon of the King of Heaven!
Art thou the flag of wo and death,

From angel's ensign-staff unfurled?
Art thou the standard of his wrath
Waved o'er a sordid sinful world?
No, from that pure pellucid beam,
That erst o'er plains of Bethlehem shone,*
No latent evil we can deem,

Bright herald of the eternal throne!
Whate'er portends thy front of fire,
Thy streaming locks so lovely pale-
Or peace to man, or judgments dire,
Stranger of heaven, I bid thee hail!
Where hast thou roamed these thousand years!
Why sought these polar paths again,
From wilderness of glowing spheres,
To fling thy vesture o'er the wain?
And when thou scal'st the Milky Way,
And vanishest from human view,
A thousand worlds shall hail thy ray
Through wilds of yon empyreal blue!
O! on thy rapid prow to glide!

To sail the boundless skies with thee,
And plough the twinkling stars aside,
Like foam-bells on a tranquil sea!

To brush the embers from the sun,
The icicles from off the pole;
Then far to other systems run,

Where other moons and planets roll!
Stranger of heaven! O let thine eye
Smile on a rapt enthusiast's dream;
Eccentric as thy course on high,

And airy as thine ambient beam!
And long, long may thy silver ray
Our northern arch at eve adorn;
Then, wheeling to the east away,
Light the gray portals of the morn!

When the Kye comes Hame.

Come all ye jolly shepherds
That whistle through the glen,

I'll tell ye of a secret

That courtiers dinna ken;

What is the greatest bliss

That the tongue o' man can name?

"Tis to woo a bonnie lassie
When the kye comes hame.
When the kye comes hame,
When the kye comes hame,
'Tween the gloamin and the mirk,
When the kye comes hame.
'Tis not beneath the coronet,
Nor canopy of state,
'Tis not on couch of velvet,

Nor arbour of the great-
"Tis beneath the spreading birk,
In the glen without the name,
Wi' a bonnie, bonnie lassie,

When the kye comes hame.
There the blackbird bigs his nest
For the mate he lo❜es to see,
And on the topmost bough,
O, a happy bird is he!

*It was reckoned by many that this was the same comet which appeared at the birth of our Saviour.-Hogg.

Then he pours his melting ditty,
And love is a' the theme,
And he'll woo his bonnie lassie
When the kye comes hame.
When the blewart bears a pearl,
And the daisy turns a pea,
And the bonnie lucken gowan
Has fauldit up her ee,

Then the lavrock frae the blue lift,
Draps down, and thinks nae shame
To woo his bonnie lassie

When the kye comes hame.
See yonder pawky shepherd
That lingers on the hill-
His yowes are in the fauld,
And his lambs are lying still;
Yet he downa gang to bed,
For his heart is in a flame
To meet his bonnie lassie
When the kye comes hame.
When the little wee bit heart
Rises high in the breast,
And the little wee bit starn
Rises red in the east,

O there's a joy sae dear,

That the heart can hardly frame,
Wi' a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
When the kye comes haine.
Then since all nature joins

In this love without alloy,
O, wha wad prove a traitor
To nature's dearest joy?
Or wha wad choose a crown,
Wi' its perils and its fame,
And miss his bonnie lassie
When the kye comes hame.
When the kye comes hame,
When the kye comes hame,
'Tween the gloamin and the mirk,
When the kye comes hame.

The Skylark.

Bird of the wilderness,
Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

O to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay and loud,
Far in the downy cloud,

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth,
Where, on thy dewy wing,
Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen, O'er moor and mountain green, O'er the red streamer that heralds the day, Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!

Then, when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms,

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

O to abide in the desert with thee!

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, a happy imitator of the old Scottish ballads, and a man of various talents, was born at Blackwood, near Dalswinton, Dumfriesshire, December 7, 1784. His father was gardener to a

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and the genius of Burns. His uncle having attained some eminence as a country builder, or mason, Allan was apprenticed to him, with a view to joining or following him in his trade; but this scheme did not hold, and in 1810 he removed to London, and connected himself with the newspaper press. In 1814 he was engaged as clerk of the works, or superintendent, to the late Sir Francis Chantrey, the eminent sculptor, in whose establishment he Mr continued till his death, October 29, 1842. Cunningham was an indefatigable writer. early contributed poetical effusions to the periodical works of the day, and nearly all the songs and fragments of verse in Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song (1810) are of his composition, though published by Cromek as undoubted originals. Some of these are warlike and Jacobite, some amatory and devotional (the wild lyrical breathings of Covenanting love and piety among the hills), and all of them abounding in traits of Scottish rural life and primitive manners. As songs, they are not pitched in a key to be popular; but for natural grace and tenderness, and rich Doric simplicity and fervour, these pseudo-antique strains of Mr Cunningham are inimitable. In 1822 he published Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, a dramatic poem, founded on Border story and superstition, and afterwards two volumes of Traditional Tales. Three novels of a similar description, but more diffuse and improbable-namely, Paul Jones, Sir Michael Scott, and Lord Roldan, also proceeded from his fertile pen. In 1832 he appeared again as a poet, with a rustic epic,' in twelve parts, entitled The Maid of Elvar. He edited a collection of Scottish songs, in four volumes, and an edition of Burns in eight volumes, to which he prefixed a life of the poet, enriched with new anecdotes and information.

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To Murray's Family Library he contributed a series of Lives of Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, which extended to six volumes, and proved the most popular of all his prose works. His last work (completed just two days before his death) was a Life of Sir David Wilkie, the distinguished artist, in three volumes. All these literary labours were produced in intervals from his stated avocations in Chantrey's studio, which most men would have considered ample employment. His taste and attainments in the fine arts were as

remarkable a feature in his history as his early ballad strains; and the prose style of Mr Cunningham, when engaged on a congenial subject, was justly admired for its force and freedom. There was always a freshness and energy about the man and his writings that arrested the attention and excited the imagination, though his genius was but little under the control of a correct or critical judgment. Strong nationality and inextinguishable ardour formed conspicuous traits in his character; and altogether, the life of Mr Cunningham was a fine example of successful original talent and perseverance, undebased by any of the alloys by which the former is too often accompanied.

The Young Maxwell.

'Where gang ye, thou silly auld carle? And what do ye carry there?'

'I'm gaun to the hill-side, thou sodger gentleman, To shift my sheep their lair.'

Ae stride or twa took the silly auld carle,

An' a gude lang stride took he:

"I trow thou to be a feck auld carle,
Will ye shaw the way to me?'

And he has gane wi' the silly auld carle,
Adown by the greenwood side;

'Light down and gang, thou sodger gentleman,
For here ye canna ride.'

He drew the reins o' his bonnie gray steed,

An' lightly down he sprang:

Of the comeliest scarlet was his weir coat,
Whare the gowden tassels hang.

He has thrown aff his plaid, the silly auld carle,
An' his bonnet frae 'boon his bree;

An' wha was it but the young Maxwell!
An' his gude brown sword drew he!

'Thou killed my father, thou vile South'ron!
An' ye killed my brethren three!
Whilk brake the heart o' my ae sister,
I loved as the light o' my ee!

Draw out yere sword, thou vile South'ron!
Red wat wi' blude o' my kin!

That sword it crapped the bonniest flower
E'er lifted its head to the sun!

There's ae sad stroke for my dear auld father!
There's twa for my brethren three!
An' there's ane to thy heart for my ae sister,
Wham I loved as the light o' my ee.'

Hame, Hame, Hame.

Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be,
O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!

When the flower is i' the bud, and the leaf is on the tree,

The larks shall sing me hame in my ain countrie;
Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be,
O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!
The green leaf o' loyalty's begun for to fa',
The bonnie white rose it is withering an' a';

But I'll water't wi' the blude of usurping tyrannie,
An' green it will grow in my ain countrie.
Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be,
O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!
O there's naught frae ruin my country can save,
But the keys o' kind heaven to open the grave,
That a' the noble martyrs wha died for loyaltie,
May rise again and fight for their ain countrie.
Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be,
O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!
The new grass is springing on the tap o' their graves;
The great are now gane, a' wha ventured to save,
But the sun through the mirk blinks blithe in my e'e,
I'll shine on ye yet in yere ain countrie.'
Hame, hame, hame, hame fain wad I be,
Hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!

[Fragment.]

Gane were but the winter-cauld,
And gane were but the snaw,
I could sleep in the wild woods,
Where primroses blaw.

Cauld's the snaw at my head,
And cauld at my feet,
And the finger o' death's at my een,
Closing them to sleep.

Let nane tell my father,

Or my mither sae dear,

I'll meet them baith in heaven
At the spring o' the year.

She's Gane to Dwall in Heaven.

She's gane to dwall in heaven, my lassie,
She's gane to dwall in heaven:
Ye're owre pure, quo' the voice o' God,
For dwalling out o' heaven!

O what'l she do in heaven, my lassie ?
O what'l she do in heaven ?

She'll mix her ain thoughts wi' angels' sangs,

An' make them mair meet for heaven.

She was beloved by a', my lassie,

She was beloved by a';

But an angel fell in love wi' her,
An' took her frae us a'.

Low there thou lies, my lassie,
Low there thou lies;

A bonnier form ne'er went to the yird,
Nor frae it will arise!

Fu' soon I'll follow thee, my lassie,
Fu' soon I'll follow thee;
Thou left me nought to covet ahin',
But took gudeness sel' wi' thee.

I looked on thy death-cold face, my lassie,
I looked on thy death-cold face;
Thou seemed a lily new cut i' the bud,
An' fading in its place.

I looked on thy death-shut eye, my lassie,
I looked on thy death-shut eye;
An' a lovelier light in the brow of heaven
Fell time shall ne'er destroy.

Thy lips were ruddy and calm, my lassie,
Thy lips were ruddy and calm;
But gane was the holy breath o' heaven
To sing the evening psalm.

There's naught but dust now mine, lassie,
There's naught but dust now mine;
My saul's wi' thee i' the cauld grave,
An' why should I stay behin'!

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