alluding to the poetic fame of other streams, while those of his own county remained unsung, the poet declares his resolve to atone for this neglect.
We'll gar our streams and burnies shine
Up wi' the best.
Well sing auld Coila's plains an' fells,
Her moors red-brown wi' heather-bells,
Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells.
Amply did he fulfil his promise. There is not a river, hardly even a tributary, within his reach, that has not been made famous in his lyrics. In the first bloom of opening manhood it was the Ayr and the Doon that gave him inspiration, and when broken in health and spirits, and with an early grave opening before him, it was by the banks of the Nith that his last poetic impulse arose.
In his relation to Nature there was this great difference between Burns and his literary contemporaries and immediate predecessors, that whereas even the best of them wrote rather as pleased spectators of the country, with all its infinite variety of form and colour, of life and sound, of calm and storm, he sang as one into whose very inmost heart the power of these things had entered. For the first time in English literature the burning ardour of a passionate soul went out in tumultuous joy towards Nature. The hills and woods, the streams and dells were to Burns not merely enjoyable scenes to be visited and described. They became part of his very being. In their changeful aspects he found the counterpart of his own variable moods; they ministered to his joys, they soothed his sorrows. They yielded him a companionship that never palled, a
