Happy, ye sons of busy life,

Who, equal to the bustling strife,
No other view regard!

Even when the wished end's denied,
Yet while the busy means are plied,
They bring their own reward :
Whilst I, a hope-abandoned wight,
Unfitted with an aim,
Meet every sad returning night
And joyless morn the same.
You, bustling, and justling,
Forget each grief and pain;
I, listless, yet restless,

Find every prospect vain.

How blest the solitary's lot,
Who, all-forgetting, all-forgot,
Within his humble cell,

The cavern wild with tangling roots,
Sits o'er his newly-gathered fruits,
Beside his crystal well!
Or haply to his evening thought,
By unfrequented stream,
The ways of men are distant brought,

A faint collected dream;

While praising, and raising

His thoughts to Heaven on high,

As wand'ring, meand'ring,

He views the solemn sky.

Than I, no lonely hermit placed,

Where never human footstep traced,
Less fit to play the part;

The lucky moment to improve,

And just to stop, and just to move,
With self-respecting art.

But ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys, Which I too keenly taste,

The solitary can despise,

Can want, and yet be blest!
He needs not, he heeds not,
Or human love or hate,
Whilst I here, must cry here
At perfidy ingrate!

Oh enviable, early days,

When dancing thoughtless pleasure's maze, To care, to guilt unknown!

How ill exchanged for riper times,

To feel the follies, or the crimes,

Of others, or my own!

Ye tiny elves that guiltless sport,
Like linnets in the bush,

Ye little know the ills ye court,
When manhood is your wish!
The losses, the crosses,

That active man engage!
The fears all, the tears all,

Of dim declining age.

TO RUIN.

ALL hail! inexorable lord,

At whose destruction-breathing word
The mightiest empires fall!
Thy cruel, wo-delighted train,
The ministers of grief and pain,

A sullen welcome, all!
With stern-resolved, despairing eye,

I see each aimèd dart;
For one has cut my dearest tie,

And quivers in my heart.
Then lowering and pouring,

The storm no more I dread;
Though thick'ning and black'ning
Round my devoted head.

And thou grim Power, by life abhorred,
While life a pleasure can afford,
Oh hear a wretch's prayer!
No more I shrink appalled, afraid;
I court, I beg thy friendly aid,

To close this scene of care!
When shall my soul, in silent peace,
Resign life's joyless day;

My weary heart its throbbings cease,
Cold mouldering in the clay?

No fear more, no tear more,
To stain my lifeless face;
Encla-pèd and grasped
Within thy cold embrace!

SONG.

AGAIN rejoicing Nature sees

Her robe assume its vernal hues;
Her leafy locks wave in the breeze,
All freshly steeped in morning dews.

In vain to me the cowslips blaw,
In vain to me the violets spring;

In vain to me, in glen or shaw,

The mavis and the lint white sing. linnet

The merry ploughboy cheers his team,
Wi' joy the tentie seedsman stalks; heedful

1 Burns, on publishing this song in his first Edinburgh edition, 1787, admitted into it a chorus from a song written by a gentleman of that city:

"And maun I still on Menie doat,

And bear the scorn that's in her e'e,
For it's jet jet black, and it's like a hawk,
And it winna let a body be!"

This doggerel interferes so sadly with the strain of Burns's beautiful ode, that the present editor felt compelled to extrude it. He hopes it will never hereafter be replaced.

But life to me's a weary dream,

A dream of ane that never wauks.

The wanton coot the water skims,
Amang the reeds the ducklings cry,
The stately swan majestic swims,
And everything is blest but I.

The shepherd steeks his faulding slap,1 And owre the moorland whistles shrill; Wi' wild, unequal, wandering step,

I meet him on the dewy hill.

And when the lark, 'tween light and dark,
Blithe waukens by the daisy's side,
And mounts and sings on flittering wings,
A woe-worn ghaist I hameward glide.

Come, Winter, with thine angry howl,
And raging bend the naked tree:
Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul,
When Nature all is sad like me!

NOTE TO GAVIN HAMILTON.

The wretchedness breathed in the foregoing poems is of too extreme a character to have been long predominant, at least in all its force, in such a mind as that of Burns. At the beginning of May, he is found

1 Shuts the opening in his fold.