service; and Skye, with its Loch Coriskin, piercing like
a bright arrow the black breast of the shaggy hills of Cuchullin. Burns
had around him only the features of ordinary Scottish scenery, but from
these he drank in no common draught of inspiration; and how admirably
has he reproduced such simple objects as the "burn stealing under the
lang yellow broom," and the "milk-white thorn that scents the evening
gale," the "burnie wimplin' in its glen," and the

"Rough bur-thistle spreadin' wide
Amang the bearded bear."

These objects constituted the poetry of his own fields; they were linked
with his own joys, loves, memories, and sorrows, and these he felt
impelled to enshrine in song. It may, indeed, be doubted if his cast of
mind would have led him to sympathise with bold and savage scenery. In
proof of this, we remember that, although he often had seen the gigantic
ridges of Arran looming through the purple evening air, or with the
"morning suddenly spread" upon their summer summits, or with premature
snow tinging their autumnal tops, he never once alludes to them, so far
as we remember, either in his poetry or prose; and that although he
spent a part of his youth on the wild smuggling coast of Carrick, he has
borrowed little of his imagery from the sea--none, we think, except the
two lines in the "Vision"--

"I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar."

His descriptions are almost all of inland scenery. Yet, that there was a
strong sense of the sublime in his mind is manifest from the lines
succeeding the above--

"And when the North his fleecy store
Drove through the sky,
I saw grim Nature's visage hoar
Struck thy young eye;"

as well as from the delight he expresses in walking beside a planting in
a windy day, and listening to the blast howling through the trees and
raving over the plain. Perhaps his mind was most alive to the sublimity
of _motion_, of agitation, of tumultuous energy, as exhibited in a
snow-storm, or in the "torrent rapture" of winds and waters, because
they seemed to sympathise with his own tempestuous passions, even as the
fierce Zanga, in the "Revenge," during a storm, exclaims---

"I like this rocking of the battlements.
Rage on, ye winds; burst clouds, and waters roar!
You bear a just resemblance of my fortune,
And suit the gloomy habit of my soul."

Probably Burns felt little admiration of the calm, coloss