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.

His presence haunts this room to-night,
A form of mingled mist and light
From that far coast.

Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! this vacant chair is thine,
Dear guest and ghost!

HELEN OF TYRE.

WHAT phantom is this that appears
Through the purple mist of the years,
Itself but a mist like these?
A woman of cloud and of fire;
It is she; it is Helen of Tyre,

The town in the midst of the seas.

O Tyre! in thy crowded streets
The phantom appears and retreats,
And the Israelites that sell
Thy lilies and lions of brass,
Look up as they see her pass,
And murmur "Jezebel!"

Then another phantom is seen
At her side, in a gray gabardine,

With beard that floats to his waist;
It is Simon Magus, the Seer;
He speaks, and she pauses to hear
The words he utters in haste.

He says:
"From this evil fame,
From this life of sorrow and shame,

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.

ELEGIAC.

See, how the ivy climbs and expands Over this humble hermitage,

narrow mouth of the harbor
sea, under its cur-

Motionless lies the tain of cloud; Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon,

Like to the towers of a town, built on

the verge of the sea.

Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean;

With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep,

Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings,

Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.

Now they have vanished away, have dispeared in the ocean;

Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea!

All have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring roadstead, Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.

Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsatisfied longings;

Sunk are the turrets of cloud into the ocean of dreams; While in a haven of rest my heart is riding at anchor,

Held by the chains of love, held by the anchors of trust!

OLD ST. DAVID'S AT RADNOR.

WHAT an image of peace and rest

Is this little church among its graves! All is so quiet; the troubled breast, The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed, Here may find the repose it craves.