How placed along the sacred board,
Their hoary pastor's looks adored,—
His voice with peace and blessing stored,
Sent from above,
And faith and hope, and joy afford
And boundless love.
O'er this with warm seraphic glow,
Celestial beings pleased bow;
And whispered hear the holy vow,
'Mid grateful tears;
And mark amid such scenes below
Their future peers."[3]
Or you might leave this scene, and study the Scottish character with some shepherd boy on the hills, as he reads God's word upon the greensward, and meditates on things divine, while tending his flocks far from the house of God, on the sabbath day, a circumstance to which Grahame in his poem of the Sabbath, has touchingly referred, and which Telford has thus described:
"Say how, by early lessons taught,
Truth's pleasing air is willing caught!
Congenial to the untainted thought,
The shepherd boy,
Who tends his flocks on lonely height,
Feels holy joy.
Is aught on earth so lovely known,
On sabbath morn, and far alone.
His guileless soul all naked shown
Before his God—
Such prayers must welcome reach the throne
And bless'd abode.
O tell! with what a heartfelt joy
The parent eyes the virtuous boy;
And all his constant kind employ,
Is how to give
The best of lear he can enjoy,
As means to live."
The scenes of "the Cotter's Saturday Night," one of the sweetest poems in any language, are exact transcripts from real life, as Burns himself intimates. His father was "a godly man," and was wont, morning and evening, to "turn o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, the big ha' Bible," and worship God, with his family. Where in Italy or in Austria will you meet aught so beautiful or thrilling as the following?
"The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They round the ingle form a circle wide,
The sire turns o'er wi' patriarchal grace
The big ha' Bible ance his father's pride:
His bonnet reverently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets[4] wearing thin and bare:
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And 'Let us worship God!' he says with solemn air.
They chant their artless notes in simple guise,
They tune their hearts, by far their noblest aim;
Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive Martyrs worthy of the name,
Or noble Elgin beats the heavenward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays.
Compared with these Italian trills are tame;
The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise,
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.
The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high,
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.