Page:Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge).djvu/217

195

And I have arrows ^[1]mystically dipt,
Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead?
And shall he die unwept, and sink to Earth
"Without the meed of one melodious tear?"
Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved Bard,
Who to the "Illustrious^[2] of his native Land
So properly did look for Patronage."
Ghost of Mæcenas! hide thy blushing face!
They snatch'd him from the Sickle and the Plough—
To guage^{[errata 1]}) Ale-Firkins.

Oh! for shame return!
On a bleak Rock, midway the Aonian mount.
There stands a lone and melancholy tree,
Whose aged branches to the midnight blast
Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,
Ere yet the unwholesome Night-dew be exhaled,
And weeping wreath it round thy Poet's Tomb.
Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,

1. Vide Pind. Olym. ii. l. 156.
2. Verbatim from Burns's dedication of his Poem to the Nobility and Gentry of the Caledonian Hunt.

O 2

Errata

1. Original: guard was amended to guage: detail