h what profound
pathos are they charged!

"List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle;
I think me on the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O' winter war,
And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle,
Beneath a scaur!

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,
That, in the merry months o' spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
An' close thy ee?

Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd,
Lone from your savage homes exiled,
The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cot spoil'd,
My heart forgets,
While pitiless the tempest wild
Sore on you beats."

Burns is our Lowland bard--but poetry is poetry all over the world, when
streamed from the life-blood of the human heart. So sang the Genius of
inspired humanity in his bleak "auld clay-biggin," on one of the braes
of Coila, and now our heart responds the strain, high up among the
Celtic cliffs, central among a sea of mountains hidden in a snow-storm
that enshrouds the day. Ay--the one single door of this Hut--the one
single "winnock," does "rattle"--by fits--as the blast smites it, in
spite of the white mound drifted hill-high all round the buried
dwelling. Dim through the peat-reek cower the figures in tartan--fear
has hushed the cry of the infant in the swinging cradle--and all the
other imps are mute. But the household is thinner than usual at the
meal-hour; and feet that loved to follow the red-deer along the bent,
now fearless of pitfalls, since the first lour of morning light have
been traversing the tempest. The shepherds, who sit all day long when
summer hues are shining, and summer flowerets are blowing, almost idle
in their plaids, beneath the shadow of some rock watching their flocks
feeding above, around, and below, now expose their bold breasts to all
the perils of the pastoral life. This is our Arcadia--a realm of
wrath--woe--danger, and death. Here are bred the men whose blood--when
the bagpipe blows--is prodigally poured forth on a thousand shores. The
limbs strung to giant-force by such snows as these, moving in line of
battle within the shadow of the Pyramids,

"Brought from the dust the sound of liberty,"

while the Invincible standard was lowered before the heroes of the Old
Black Watch, and victory out of the very heart of defe