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Oh dear, dear Jeanie Morrison,
The thochts o' bygane years
Still fling their shadows ower my path,
And blind my een wi' tears!
They blind my een wi' saut, saut tears,
And sair and sick I pine,

As memory idly summons up

The blithe blinks o' langsyne.

'Twas then we luvit ilk ither weel,

'Twas than we twa did part;

Sweet time, sad time! twa bairns at schule,
Twa bairns, and but ae heart!

'Twas then we sat on ae high bink,

To leir1 ilk ither lear 2:

And tones, and looks, and smiles were shed,
Remembered ever mair.

I wonder, Jeanie, often yet
When sitting on that bink,

Cheek touchin' cheek, loof locked in loof,
What our wee heads could think.

When baith bent doun ower ae braid page,
Wi' ae buik on our knee,

Thy lips were on thy lesson, but

My lesson was in thee.

Oh mind ye how we hung our heads,
How cheeks brent red wi' shame,
Whene'er the school-weans laughin' said,

We cleeked thegither hame?

And mind ye o' the Saturdays

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(The schule then skail't* at noon) When we ran aft to speel the braesThe broomy braes o' June?

My head rins round and round about,

My heart flows like a sea,

As ane by ane the thochts rush back

O' schuletime and o' thee.

3

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1 learn. learning. palm. lit. hooked clung. dispersed. climb.

VOL. IV.

O mornin' life! O mornin' luve!
O lichtsome days and lang,

When hinnied hopes around our hearts,
Like summer blossoms sprang!

Oh, mind ye, luve, how oft we left
The deavin' dinsome town,
To wander by the green burnside,

And hear its water croon.

The summer leaves hung ower our heids,
The flowers burst round our feet,
And in the gloamin' i̇' the wud
The throstle whusslit sweet.

The throstle whusslit i' the wud,
The burn sang to the trees,
And we with Nature's heart in tune,
Concerted harmonies;

And on the knowe abune the burn,
For hours thegither sat

In the silentest o' joy, till baith
Wi' very gladness grat!

Aye, aye, dear Jeanie Morrison,
Tears trinkled down your cheek,
Like dew-beads on a rose, yet nane
Had ony power to speak!

That was a time, a blessed time,

When hearts were fresh and young,
When freely gushed all feelings forth
Unsyllabled-unsung!

I marvel, Jeanie Morrison,

Gin I hae been to thee,

As closely twined wi' earliest thochts
As ye hae been to me?

Oh, tell me gin their music fills
Thine ear as it does mine;

Oh, say gin e'er your heart grows grit
Wi' dreamings o' langsyne?

M m

I've wandered east, I've wandered west,
I've borne a weary lot;

But in my wanderings, far or near,
Ye never were forgot.

The fount that first burst frae this heart,
Still travels on its way;

And channels deeper as it rins

The luve o' life's long day.

O dear, dear Jeanie Morrison,
Since we were sindered young,
I've never seen your face, nor heard
The music of your tongue;

But I could hug all wretchedness,

And happy could I die,

Did I but ken your heart still dreamed

O' bygane days and me.

THOMAS HOOD.

[THOMAS HOOD was born in London in May, 1799. His chief poetical works, scattered during his life-time in various publications, are contained in two volumes entitled respectively Poems, 1846, and Poems of Wit and Humour, 1847. A complete edition of his works appeared in 1862. He died in May, 1845, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where, some years after his death, a monument was erected to him by public subscription.]

Since the issue in 1860 of the delightful Memorials of Thomas Hood by his son and daughter, both of whom are now dead, it has not been easy to dissociate the poet from the touching picture of him which those pages present. Nor indeed does literature often afford the spectacle of a heroism so smiling as that of the indefatigable manufacturer of Whims and Oddities, Comic Annuals, and the like,—pumping up ceaseless fun for a subsistence,—faultless in his relations of husband and father,—patient under sickness and 'lack of pence'-and concluding, at last, that the life which to him, as to Pope, had been ‘a long disease,' was still worth living, and the world he was leaving a beautiful one, and not so bad, humanly speaking, even as people would make it out.' Whether, under favourable circumstances, he would have produced more work of a high character is a question that it is scarcely profitable to discuss; but it is manifest that during his life-time the somewhat coarse-palated public welcomed most keenly not so much his best as his second-best. The 'Tom Hood' they cared for was not the delicate and fanciful author of the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, but the Hood of Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg, -the master of broad-grin and equivoque, the delightful parodist, the irrepressible and irresistible joker and Merry-Andrew. It is not to be denied that much of his work in this way is excellent

of its kind, admirable for its genuine drollery and whim, having often at its core, moreover, that subtle sense of the lacrima rerum, which lends a piquancy of sadness and almost a quality of permanence to much of our modern jesting. But the rest!-the larger part! Nothing except the record of his over-strained, overburdened life can enable us to understand how the author of the Ode to Rae Wilson, the Lament for Chivalry, and the lines On a distant Prospect of Clapham Academy could ever have produced such mechanical and melancholy mirth as much of that which has been preserved appears to be. Yet his worst work is seldom without some point; it is better than the best of many others; and, with all its drawbacks, it is at least always pure. It should be remembered too that the fashions of fun pass away like other fashions.

It was fortunate, however, for his good fame that the public of his day could not wholly detain him in the jester's domain. He was from the first, and remained throughout his life, a poet of distinct individuality and delicacy of note. Side by side with the fugitive puns and work-a-day witticisms, he found leisure to produce a number of pieces worthy of something more than mere ephemeral life. Such are Hero and Leander, the galloping anapæsts of Lycus the Centaur, and the beautiful petition to 'alldevouring Time' for Titania and her fragile following. In these, his earlier works, we may trace the influence of the Elizabethans, or perhaps we should say of Lamb and Keats. But in 1829 he struck a note more intimately his own in the Dream of Eugene Aram, a poem of strange fascination, and exhibiting an extraordinary faculty for 'moving a horror skilfully' and laying bare the tortured human heart. Many of his sonnets are beautiful, and not a few of his detached songs and ballads (e.g. Fair Inez, I remember, It was the time of Roses) have that rare merit of tunefulness which is as much in the matter as in the metre. Here and there, too, as in the Death-Bed, he touches the keenest chord of pathos. But what is most noteworthy is that this purely poetical faculty does not seem to have declined in the popularity of his lesser labours, but rather to have increased in spite of it. His best pieces in this way were written in the last years of his life, when he may almost be said to have entered the Valley of the Shadow. In Punch for Christmas, 1843, appeared the Song of the Shirt, a poem with which his name is usually associated. It was the sharp and exceeding bitter cry of the hitherto inarticulate, the

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