XII.

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A WINTER NIGHT.

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      “Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are

       That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm!

       How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

       Your looped and widow’d raggedness defend you

       From seasons such as these?”

      Shakspeare.

      [“This poem,” says my friend Thomas Carlyle, “is worth several homilies on mercy, for it is the voice of Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy: his soul rushes forth into all the realms of being: nothing that has existence can be indifferent to him.”]

      When biting Boreas, fell and doure,

       Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;

       When Phœbus gies a short-liv’d glow’r

       Far south the lift,

       Dim-darkening through the flaky show’r,

       Or whirling drift:

      Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,

       Poor labour sweet in sleep was locked,

       While burns, wi’ snawy wreeths up-choked,

       Wild-eddying swirl.

       Or through the mining outlet bocked,

       Down headlong hurl.

      Listening, the doors an’ winnocks rattle,

       I thought me on the ourie cattle,

       Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle

       O’ winter war,

       And through the drift, deep-lairing sprattle

       Beneath a scar.

      Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,

       That, in the merry months o’ spring,

       Delighted me to hear thee sing,

       What comes o’ thee?

       Whare wilt thou cower thy chittering wing,

       An’ close thy e’e?

      Ev’n you on murd’ring errands toil’d,

       Lone from your savage homes exiled,

       The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled

       My heart forgets,

       While pitiless the tempest wild

       Sore on you beats.

      Now Phoebe, in her midnight reign,

       Dark muffled, viewed the dreary plain;

       Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train,

       Rose in my soul,

       When on my ear this plaintive strain

       Slow, solemn, stole:—

      “Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!

       And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost:

       Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!

       Not all your rage, as now united, shows

       More hard unkindness, unrelenting,

       Vengeful malice unrepenting,

       Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows;

       See stern oppression’s iron grip,

       Or mad ambition’s gory hand,

       Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip,

       Woe, want, and murder o’er a land!

       Even in the peaceful rural vale,

       Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale,

       How pamper’d luxury, flattery by her side,

       The parasite empoisoning her ear.

       With all the servile wretches in the rear,

       Looks o’er proud property, extended wide;

       And eyes the simple rustic hind,

       Whose toil upholds the glittering show,

       A creature of another kind,

       Some coarser substance, unrefin’d,

       Placed for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, below.

Where, where is love’s fond, tender throe, With lordly honour’s lofty brow, The powers you proudly own? Is there, beneath love’s noble name, Can harbour, dark, the selfish aim, To bless himself alone! Mark maiden innocence a prey To love-pretending snares, This boasted honour turns away, Shunning soft pity’s rising sway, Regardless of the tears and unavailing prayers! Perhaps this hour, in misery’s squalid nest, She strains your infant to her joyless breast, And with a mother’s fears shrinks at the rocking blast! Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down, Feel not a want but what yourselves create, Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate, Whom friends and fortune quite disown! Ill satisfied keen nature’s clamorous call, Stretched on his straw he lays himself to sleep, While through the ragged roof and chinky wall, Chill o’er his slumbers piles the drifty heap! Think on the dungeon’s grim confine, Where guilt and poor misfortune pine! Guilt, erring man, relenting view! But shall thy legal rage pursue The wretch, already crushed low By cruel fortune’s undeserved blow? Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress, A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!”

      I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer

       Shook off the pouthery snaw,

       And hailed the morning with a cheer—

       A cottage-rousing craw!

      But deep this truth impressed my mind—

       Through all his works abroad,

       The heart benevolent and kind

       The most resembles God.