Thee, Caledonia, thy wild heaths among,
Thee, famed for martial deed and sacred song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes;
Where is that soul of freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead,
Beneath the hallowed turf where Wallace lies!
Here it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death!
Ye babbling winds, in silence sweep,
Disturb ye not the hero's sleep,
Nor give the coward secret breath.
Is this the power in freedom's war,
That wont to bid the battle rage?
"With the additions of, —
Behold that eye which shot immortal hate,
Braved Usurpation's boldest daring;
That arm which, nerved with thundering fate,
Crushed the despot's proudest bearing:
One quenched in darkness like the sinking star,
And one the palsied arm of tottering, powerless age."
It was not known to the general public that this poem, begun nearly sixty-three years ago, was ever completed. All who admire Burns, and their name is legion, will be glad to see it in full. It runs thus:
ODE FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY.
No Spartan tale, no Attic shell,
No lyre Eolian I awake:
'Tis liberty's bold note I swell,
Thy harp, Columbia, let me take.
See, gathering thousands, while I sing,
A broken chain exulting bring
And dash it in a tyrant's face,
And dare him to his very beard,
And tell him he no more is feared!
No more the despot of Columbia's race;
A tyrant's proudest insults braved,
They shout, a people freed! they hail an empire saved.
Where is man's godlike form?
Where is that brow erect and bold,
That eye that can, unmoved, behold
The wildest rage, the wildest storm,
That e'er created fury dared to raise?
Avaunt! thou caitiff, servile, base,
That tremblest at a despot's nod;
Yet, crouching under the iron rod,
Can'st laud the arm that struck the insulting blow?
Art thou of man's imperial line?
Dost boast that countenance divine?
Each skulking feature answers, No!
But come, ye sons of liberty,
Columbia's offspring, brave as free,
In danger's hour still flaming in the van,
Ye know, and dare maintain, the royalty of man.
Alfred, on thy starry throne,
Surrounded by the tuneful choir,
The bards that erst have struck the patriot lyre,
And roused the free-born Briton's soul of fire.
No more thy England own.
Dare injured nations form the great design
To make detested tyrants bleed?
Thy England execrates the glorious deed!
Beneath her hostile banners waving,
Every pang of honor braving,
England in thunder calls — "The tyrant's cause is mine!"
That hour accurst, how did the fiends rejoice,
And hell thro' all her confines raise th' exulting voice —
That hour which saw the generous English name
Linkt with such damned deeds of everlasting shame!
Thee, Caledonia, thy wild heaths among,
Famed for the martial deed, the heaven-taught song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes.
Where is that soul of freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead,
Beneath that hallowed turf where Wallace lies!
Hear it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death!
Ye babbling winds, in silence sweep,
Disturb not ye the hero's sleep,
Nor give the coward secret breath.
Is this the ancient Caledonian form,
Firm as her rock, resistless as her storm?
Show me that eye which shot immortal hate,
Braved usurpation's boldest daring!
Dark quenched as yonder sinking star,
No more that glance lightens afar;
That palsied arm no more whirls on the waste of war.
Judging from internal evidence, there can be no doubt of the authenticity of this lay of liberty, although it has never appeared in any edition of Burns. To Mrs. Dunlap, the gentle, highly intellectual, and well-informed lady, who, on the first accidental perusal of "The Cotter's Saturday Night," solicited his acquaintance, and was his best and wisest friend ever after, Burns had communicated a few stanzas of his Washington ode, and we find them in the above poem with a few alterations, which prove the authorship. Considering that when he wrote it Burns was himself an official under "the despot" he condemned, and that he seems to have endorsed the execution of poor Louis Capet, a weak rather than a bad man, it must be confessed that the poet was as bold as thoughtless. As it is, the poem evidently did not receive its maker's latest touches.
The question, "'Whence comes it now?" is to be answered in a little narrative. About the year 1833 William Wilson, of gentle blood and culture, arrived in the United States, with his family, from Scotland, and settled in Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, as bookseller and publisher, and continued there until his death, in his fifty-ninth year, in August, 1860. Like
