our seasons yield;
Ye deck sae flush the greenwood bowers,
The garden, and the field;
The pathway verge by hedge and tree,
So fresh, so green, and gay,
Where every lovely blue flower's e'e
Is opening to the day.
The river banks and craggy peaks
In wilding blossoms drest;
With ivy o'er their jutting nooks
Ye screen the ouzel's nest;
From precipice, abrupt and bold,
Your tendrils flaunt in air,
With craw-flowers dangling living gold
Ye tuft the steep brown scaur.
Your foliage shades the wild bird's nest
From every prying e'e,
With fairy fingers ye invest
In woven flowers the lea;
Around the lover's blissful hour
Ye draw your leafy screen,
And shade those in your rosy bower,
Who love to muse unseen.
JOHN BURTT.
John Burtt was born about the year 1790, at Knockmarloch, in the parish
of Riccarton, and county of Ayr. With a limited school education, he was
apprenticed to a weaver in Kilmarnock; but at the loom he much improved
himself in general scholarship, especially in classical learning. In his
sixteenth year he was decoyed into a ship of war at Greenock, and
compelled to serve on board. Effecting his escape, after an arduous
servitude of five years, he resumed the loom at Kilmarnock. He
subsequently taught an adventure school, first in Kilmarnock, and
afterwards at Paisley. The irksome labours of sea-faring life he had
sought to relieve by the composition of verses; and these in 1816 he
published, under the title of "Horae Poeticae; or, the Recreations of a
Leisure Hour." In 1817 he emigrated to the United States, where his
career has been prosperous. Having studied theology at Princeton
College, New Jersey, he became a licentiate of the Presbyterian Church,
and was appointed to a ministerial charge at Salem. In 1831 he removed
to Philadelphia, where he edited a periodical entitled the
_Presbyterian_. Admitted in 1833 to a Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati,
he there edited the _Standard_, a religious newspaper. In August 1835,
he was promoted to a chair in the Theological Seminary of that place.
O'ER THE MIST-SHROUDED CLIFFS.[8]
AIR--_'Banks of the Devon.'_
O'er the mist-shrouded cliffs of the gray mountain straying,
Where the wild winds of winter incessantly rave;
What woes wring my heart while intently surveying
The storm's gloomy path on the breast o
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