A VOICE FROM THE FAR WEST,
Hailing the Centenary Birthday of Burns.
Happy thy name, O BURNS! for burns, in thy native Doric,
Meaneth the free bright streams, exhaustless, pellucid, and sparkling,
Mountain-born, wild and erratic, kissing the flow'rets in passing,
Type of thy verse and thyself—loving and musical ever;
And the streams by thy verse made immortal are known by our giant rivers,
Where the emigrants sing them to soothe the yearnings for home in their bosoms,
And the Coila and gentle Doon, by the song of the Celtic wanderer,
Are known to the whispering reeds that border the great Mississippi.
Thou wert the lad for the lasses! lasses the same are as misses;
And here we have misses had pleased you—Missouri and the Mississippi.
And "green grow the rushes" beside them—as thy evergreen chorus would have them.
Thou wert the champion of freedom!—Thou didst rejoice in our glory!
When we at Bunker's Hill no bunkum display'd, but true courage!
Jubilant thou wert in our Declaration of Independence!
More a Republican thou than a chain-hugging bow-and-scrape Royalist!
Even the Stars and the Stripes seem appointed the flag of thy destiny;—
The stars are the types of thy glory, the stripes thou didst get from Misfortune.
Rival Rhymes, in honour of Burns. Edited by Ben Trovato (Routledge, Warnes & Routledge. London, 1859.)
There are several excellent parodies in Lays of the Saintly, amongst them the following, which is given here as it is also in the style of Longfellow's Evangeline:—