embark for the West Highlands to arrange matters among her friends for our projected change of life. At the close of Autumn following, she crossed the sea to meet me at Greenock; where she had scarce landed when she was seized with a malignant fever, which hurried my dear girl to the grave in a few days! before I could even hear of her illness." We learn from four of his biographers, that this adieu was performed with all those simple and striking ceremonials which rustic sentiment has devised to prolong tender emotions and to inspire awe. The lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook--they laved their hands in its limpid stream, and, holding a Bible between them, pronounced their vows to be faithful to each other. They parted-never to meet again! The anniversary of Mary Campbell's death (for that was her name) awakening in the sensitive mind of Burns the most lively emotion, he retired from his family, then residing on the farm of Ellisland, and wandered, solitary, on the banks of the Nith, and about the farm-yard, in the extremest agitation of mind, nearly the whole of the night. His excitement was so great, that he threw himself on the side of a corn-stack, and there conceived his sublime and tender Elegy; which, although so well known, we shall, nevertheless, present: Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray, Again thou usherest in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary! dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? Seest thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? That sacred hour can I forget, Can I forget the hallowed grove, Where by the winding Ayr we met, To live one day of parting love? Eternity cannot efface Those records dear of transports past; Ah! little thought we 'twas our last! Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore, Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, My Mary! dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? Seest thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? The muse of the poet-lover of the Highland Mary owed much of its inspiration to the sex. He tells us that when he desired to feel the pure spirit of poetry, and obey successfully its impulse, he put himself on a regimen of admiring a fine woman. Burns was possessed of deep emotions and delicate sensibilities, and he was easily subdued by the sweetest of human influences. 'My heart," he says in one of his letters, "was complete tinder, and eternally lighted up by some goddess or other." During the three years he spent at Ellisland, Burns was so deeply engaged in the labours of his farm, and those connected with his appointment in the Excise, that he had little of either time or inclination for the cultivation of his poetical gift. Yet, even in this busy time, he contrived to celebrate the charms of one or two local divinities. One of these was Miss Jeffrey, daughter of the minister of Lochmaben. Spending an evening at the manse, he was greatly pleased with this young lady, who did the honours of the table; and he next morning presented at breakfast the lines which have made her immortal : I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, a gate, I fear, I'll dearly rue; I gat my death frae twa sweet een, twa lovely een o' bonnie blue. 'Twas not her golden ringlets bright, her lips like roses wat wi' dew, Her heaving bosom, lily white-it was her een sae bonnie blue. She talked, she smiled, my heart she wiled, she charmed my soul, I wist nae how; And aye the stound, the deadly wound, cam frae her een sae bonnie GEORGE DARLEY wrote this Song of the Summer Winds :— Up the dale and down the bourne, o'er the meadow swift we fly; Now the maiden rose is blushing at the frolic things we say, Down the glen, across the mountain, o'er the yellow heath we roam, |