Music, the master-spirit that can move
Its waves to war, or lull them into love—
Can cheer the sinking sailor 'mid the wave,
And bid the warrior on! nor fear the grave,
Inspire the fainting pilgrim on the road,
And elevate his soul to claim his God.
Then, boatman, wind that horn again!
Though much of sorrow mark its strain,
Yet are its notes to sorrow dear;
What though they wake fond memory's tear?
Tears are sad memory's sacred feast,
And rapture oft her chosen guest.
[HEW AINSLIE]
Hew Ainslie, the foremost Scottish-Kentucky poet, was born at Bargery Mains, Ayrshire, April 5, 1792. Ill-health cut short Ainslie's education at the Ayr Academy, but some years later he went up to Glasgow to study law. Law and Hew Ainslie were not congenial fellows, and he shortly embarked upon the art of landscape gardening. He was next a clerk in Edinburgh, and also amanuensis for Professor Dugald Stewart. "Gradually the clouds of [Ainslie's] tobacco smoke began to curl into seven letters which looked like America." He was thirty years of age when he arrived at New York. He spent his first years in New York and Indiana as a farmer, but he soon relinquished this work and went, in 1829, to Louisville, Kentucky, where, three years later, an Ohio river flood swept his property away. And two years after this disastrous flood, fire destroyed his property in Indiana. Undismayed by misfortune, Ainslie became a contractor and supervised the erection of many large business structures in Louisville and other cities. During all these years he was assiduously courting the Muse, and making a great reputation for himself as a poet. Ainslie's first book, A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns (Deptford, 1822), is the English edition of his charming lyrics; and his Scottish Songs, Ballads, and Poems (New York, 1855), is the only American edition of his work. In 1864, forty-two years after his departure, Ainslie revisited the land of his birth, where he was hailed as one of Scotland's finest singers since Robert Burns. Kentucky was in the poet's blood, however, and a year later he returned to his home at Louisville. His American friends were not to be outdone by his home people, and they arranged a great home-coming for him. In 1871, when the Scots of Louisville assembled to celebrate the birthday of Burns, Ainslie, the toastmaster, arose and smilingly confessed to having once kissed "Bonnie Jean," Burns's widow. He died at Louisville, March 11, 1878. A comprehensive Scottish edition of his A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns, and Poems, was issued in 1892. The Ingle Side, a little song of sixteen lines, is Ainslie's masterpiece; but it was as a poet of the sea that he won his great reputation. "As Lloyd Mifflin is America's greatest sonneteer, so Hew Ainslie, the adopted Kentuckian, may perhaps be ranked as America's most ardent singer of the sea."
Bibliography. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1887, v. i); Hew Ainslie, by A. S. Mackenzie (Library of Southern Literature, Atlanta, Georgia, 1909, v. i).
THE BOUROCKS O' BARGENY
[From A Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns, and Poems (Paisley, Scotland, 1892)]
I left ye, Jeanie, blooming fair,
'Mang the bourocks o' Bargeny; [bowers]
I've found ye on the banks o' Ayr,
But sair ye're altered, Jeanie.
I left ye 'mang the woods sae green,
In rustic weed befitting;
I've found ye buskit like a queen, [attired]
In painted chaumbers sitting. [chambers]