ioo LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



' Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, 

 Wi' bickerin', dancin' dazzle ; 

 Whyles cookit underneath the braes, 

 Below the spreading hazel 



Unseen that night.' 



Born near the river Ayr, and having spent his boy- 

 hood and youth in its valley, Burns had ever a special 

 affection for that stream, along whose banks he had 

 composed some of his finest poems. When his en- 

 forced emigration to America was settled, and his 

 trunk on its way to the ship, he wrote a parting song 

 in the burden of which the banks of Ayr are made 

 to stand for his native country as a whole : 

 ' The bursting tears my heart declare, 

 Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr.' x 



When the respite came, and he found himself famous 

 and in Edinburgh, the Address which he wrote to the 

 Scottish capital contrasted his reception there with what 

 had gone before, and again his heart was by his be- 

 loved river : 



' From marking wildly-scattered flowers, 

 As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd, 

 And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours, 

 I shelter in thy honour'd shade.' 



And lastly, when the shadows were beginning to 

 gather around him at Ellisland, his thoughts would 

 go back to the same scene. In one of his latest and 

 most pathetic songs we find once more a reminiscence 

 of his associations with the river of his youth : 



' Ayr gurgling kiss'd his pebbled shore 



O'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green ; 

 The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar, 

 Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene. 



1 The gloomy night is gathering fast. 



