So when the storm the forest rends,
The robin in the hedge descends,
And sober chirps securely.

Additional verse in Closeburn MS.

Now for my friends' and brothers' sakes,
And for my native Land o' Cakes,
I pray with holy fire-

Lord, send a rough-shod troop of hell
O'er all would Scotland buy or sell,
And grind them into mire!

ON CAPTAIN MATTHEW HENDERSON,

A GENTLEMAN WHO HELD THE PATENT FOR HIS HONOURS IMMEDIATELY FROM ALMIGHTY GOD.

"Should the poor be flattered?"

SHAKESPEARE.

But now his radiant course is run,
For Matthew's course was bright:
His soul was like the glorious sun,
A matchless, heavenly light!

66

Matthew Henderson appears to have been a man about town," a kind-hearted, life-enjoying person,

whose agreeable manners perhaps often made him welcome at tables better furnished than his own. He had been one of Burns's good-fellow friends during the time he spent in Edinburgh, and he appears as a subscriber for four copies of the second edition of our bard's poems not, however, as Captain Matthew Henderson - but as "Matthew Henderson, Esq.," the "Captain" being, we understand, a mere pet-name for the man among his friends, adopted most likely from the position he held in some convivial society. Burns speaks of the poem as 66 a tribute to the memory of a man I loved much."

O DEATH! thou tyrant fell and bloody!
The meikle devil wi' a woodie
Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie,
O'er hurcheon hides,
And like stockfish come o'er his studdie
Wi' thy auld sides!

rope

smithy

hedgehog anvil

He's gane! he's gane! he's frae us torn,
The ae best fellow e'er was born!
Thee, Matthew, Nature's sel' shall mourn
By wood and wild,
Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn,
Frae man exiled!

Ye hills! near neibors o' the starns,
That proudly cock your cresting cairns!
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns,
Where Echo slumbers!

stars

eagles

Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns,
My wailing numbers!

Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens! wood-pigeon Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens! groves Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens, meandering Wi' toddlin' din, purling

leaps

waterfall

Or foaming strang, wi' hasty stens,
Frae lin to lin!

Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea!
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see!
Ye woodbines, hanging bonnilie,
In scented bowers!
Ye roses on your thorny tree,
The first o' flowers!

At dawn, when every grassy blade
Droops with a diamond at its head,
At even, when beans their fragrance shed,
I' th' rustling gale,

Ye maukins whiddin' through the hares skipping

glade,

Come join my wail!

Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood!
Ye grouse that crap the heather bud!
Ye curlews calling through a clud!
Ye whistling plover!

cloud

And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood!
He's gane for ever!

Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals!
Ye fisher herons, watching eels!
Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels
Circling the lake!

Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,
Rair for his sake!

Roar

Mourn, clam'ring craiks at close o' day, landrails
'Mang fields o' flowering clover gay!
And when ye wing your annual way
Frae our cauld shore,
Tell thae far warlds, wha lies in clay
Wham we deplore.

owls

frightful

Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower,
In some auld tree or eldritch tower,
What time the moon, wi' silent glower stare
Sets up her horn,

Wail through the dreary midnight hour
Till waukrife morn!

O rivers, forests, hills, and plains!
Oft have ye heard my canty strains:
But now, what else for me remains
But tales of wo?
And frae my e'en the drapping rains
Maun ever flow.

lively

Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year!
Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear:
Thou, Simmer, while each corny spear
Shoots up its head,

Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear
For him that's dead!

Thou, Autumn, wi' thy yellow hair,
In grief thy sallow mantle tear!
Thou, Winter, hurling through the air
The roaring blast,
Wide o'er the naked world declare
The worth we've lost!

Mourn him, thou Sun, great source of light!
Mourn, empress of the silent night!
And you, ye twinkling starnies bright,
My Matthew mourn!

For through your orbs he's ta'en his flight,
Ne'er to return.

receive

O Henderson! the man the brother!
And art thou gone, and gone for ever?
And hast thou crossed that unknown river,
Life's dreary bound?

Like thee, where shall I find another,
The world around?

Go to your sculptured tombs ye great,
In a' the tinsel trash o' state!

17

VOL. II.