AT nightfall, walking on the cliff-crown'd shore, While every moment she might be no more: Like a chain'd Lion ramping at his foes, Forward and rearward still she plunged and rose, Till broke her cable; - then she fled to land, With all the waves in chace; throes following throes; She'scaped, she struck,-she stood upon the strand. 11. The morn was beautiful, the storm gone by; Clear as the blue, sublime, o'erarching sky: There fix'd as if for ever to abide; Far down the beach had roll'd the low neap-tide, Ingloriously to rot by piece-meal here ?" III. Spring-tides return'd, and Fortune smiled; the bay While waves on waves, innumerably prest, To her own element she glid away; Buoyant and bounding like the polar Whale, Go, gallant Bark, with such a tide and gale, ROBERT BURNS. WHAT bird in beauty, flight, or song, Can with the Bard compare, Who sang as sweet, and soar'd as strong, As ever child of air? His plume, his note, his form, could BURNS, For whim or pleasure, change; He was not one, but all by turns, With transmigration strange. The Blackbird, oracle of spring, When flow'd his moral lay; The Swallow wheeling on the wing, Capriciously at play : The Humming-Bird, from bloom to bloom, Inhaling heavenly balm; The Raven, in the tempest's gloom; The Halcyon, in the calm: In "auld Kirk Alloway," the Owl, At witching time of night; By "bonnie Doon," the earliest Fowl That caroll'd to the light. He was the Wren amidst the grove, When in this homely vein; At Bannockburn the Bird of Jove, With thunder in his train: The Woodlark, in his mournful hours; The Goldfinch, in his mirth; The Thrush, a spendthrift of his powers, Enrapturing heaven and earth: |