Baith snell and keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin' fast,
An' cozie here beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
Nor house nor hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble
An' cranreuch cold!

But, mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.

Still thou art blest, compared with _me!_
The _present_ only toucheth thee:
But och! I _backward_ cast my e'e,
On prospects drear;
An' _forward_, though I canna see,
I guess and fear!

Poor Burns! Seventy years and more have passed since that cold November
morning on which he sang this simple and tender song, yet it is as fresh
in its rustic pathos, bathed in the quickening dews of the poet's heart,
as if it had sprung from the soul but an hour since: and fresh it will
still be long after the fragile hand now tracing this tribute to the
heart of love from which it flowed shall have been cold in an unknown
grave!

Such poems are worth folios of the erudite and stilted pages which are
now so rapidly pouring their scoria around us. Men seem ashamed now to
be simply natural. Either they have ceased to love, or to believe in the
dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this
present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow
love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or
failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay,
it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung
into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously
or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this
spirit lasts, there can be no hope of the achievement of high things,
for men will not open the secrets of their hearts to us, if we intend to
desecrate the holy, or to broil themselves upon a fire of thorns.

As the poet is full of love for all that God has made, because his
imagination enables him to seize it by the heart, he would in this love
fain