The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,
        They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
      The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace,
        The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride: 
      His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,
        His lyart haffets wearing thin an’ bare;
      Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
        He wales a portion wi’ judicious care;
      And “Let us worship God!” he says, with solemn air.

      They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
        They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim: 
      Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise,
        Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;
      Or noble Elgin beets the heav’n-ward flame,
        The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays: 
      Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;
        The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
      Nae unison hae they with our Creator’s praise.”—­

Burns’s poetical epistles to his friends are admirable, whether for the touches of satire, the painting of character, or the sincerity of friendship they display.  Those to Captain Grose, and to Davie, a brother poet, are among the best:—­they are “the true pathos and sublime of human life.”  His prose-letters are sometimes tinctured with affectation.  They seem written by a man who has been admired for his wit, and is expected on all occasions to shine.  Those in which he expresses his ideas of natural beauty in reference to Alison’s Essay on Taste, and advocates the keeping up the remembrances of old customs and seasons, are the most powerfully written.  His English serious odes and moral stanzas are, in general, failures, such as The Lament, Man was made to Mourn, &c. nor do I much admire his “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled.”  In this strain of didactic or sentimental moralising, the lines to Glencairn are the most happy, and impressive.  His imitations of the old humorous ballad style of Ferguson’s songs are no whit inferior to the admirable originals, such as “John Anderson, my Joe,” and many more.  But of all his productions, the pathetic and serious love-songs which he has left behind him, in the manner of the old ballads, are perhaps those which take the deepest and most lasting hold of the mind.  Such are the lines to Mary Morison, and those entitled Jessy.

      “Here’s a health to ane I lo’e dear—­
      Here’s a health to ane I lo’e dear—­
      Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,
        And soft as their parting tear—­Jessy!

      Altho’ thou maun never be mine,
        Altho’ even hope is denied;
      ’Tis sweeter for thee despairing,
        Than aught in the world beside—­Jessy!”

The conclusion of the other is as follows.