ROBERT BURNS.

I SEE amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who, in foul and fair,
Sings at his task

So clear, we know not if it is
The laverock's song we hear, or his,
Nor care to ask.

For him the ploughing of those fields A more ethereal harvest yields

Than sheaves of grain ;

Songs flush with purple bloom the rye, The plover's call, the curlew's cry, Sing in his brain.

Touched by his hand, the wayside weed Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed Beside the stream

Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass
And heather, where his footsteps pass,
The brighter seem.

He sings of love, whose flame illumes
The darkness of lone cottage rooms;
He feels the force,

The treacherous undertow and stress
Of wayward passions, and no less
The keen remorse.

At moments, wrestling with his fate,
His voice is harsh, but not with hate;
The brushwood, hung
Above the tavern door, lets fall
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall
Upon his tongue.

But still the music of his song
Rises o'er all elate and strong;

Its master-chords

Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood, Its discords but an interlude

Between the words.

And then to die so young and leave Unfinished what he might achieve! Yet better sure

Is this, than wandering up and down
An old man in a country town,
Infirm and poor.

For now he haunts his native land
As an immortal youth; his hand
Guides every plough;
He sits beside each ingle-nook,
His voice is in each rushing brook,
Each rustling bough

I will lift thee and make thee mine;
Thou hast been Queen Candace,
And Helen of Troy, and shalt be
The Intelligence Divine!"

Oh, sweet as the breath of morn,
To the fallen and forlorn

Are whispered words of praise;
For the famished heart believes
The falsehood that tempts and deceives,
And the promise that betrays.

So she follows from land to land
The wizard's beckoning hand,

As a leaf is blown by the gust,
Till she vanishes into night.
O reader, stoop down and write

With thy finger in the dust.

O town in the midst of the seas,
With thy rafts of cedar trees,

Thy merchandise and thy ships,
Thou, too, art become as naught,
A phantom, a shadow, a thought,
A name upon men's lips.

You cross the threshold; and dim and small

Is the space that serves for the Shepherd's Fold;

The narrow aisle, the bare, white wall, The pews, and the pulpit quaint and tall,

Whisper and say: "Alas! we are old."

Herbert's chapel at Bemerton

Hardly more spacious is than this; But Poet and Pastor, blent in one, Clothed with a splendor, as of the sun, That lowly and holy edifice.

It is not the wall of stone without
That makes the building small

great

or

But the soul's light shining round about, And the faith that overcometh doubt,

And the love that stronger is than hate.

With your dreamy eyes and your golden

hair,

When you and your lover meet to-day You will thank me for looking some other

way.