Two other Poems on the same subject may fitly be inserted in this place, though, as appears from the Poet’s notes, one of them at least belongs to a later date.
AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS. 1803.
seven years after his death.
I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold,
At thoughts of what I now behold:
As vapours breathed from dungeons cold
Strike pleasure dead,
So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid.
And have I then thy bones so near,
And thou forbidden to appear?
As if it were thyself that’s here,
I shrink with pain;
And both my wishes and my fear
Alike are vain.
Off weight—nor press on weight!—away
Dark thoughts!—they came, but not to stay;
With chastened feelings would I pay
The tribute due
To him, and aught that hides his clay
From mortal view.
Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius ‘glinted’ forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glorify its humble birth
With matchless beams.
The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow,
The struggling heart, where be they now?—
Full soon the Aspirant of the plough,
The prompt, the brave,
Slept, with the obscurest, in the low
And silent grave.
I mourned with thousands, but as one
More deeply grieved, for He was gone
Whose light I hailed when first it shone,
And showed my youth
How Verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.
Alas! where’er the current tends,
Regret pursues and with it blends,—