Classic Poem

What bird, in beauty, flight, or song,
Can with the Bard compare,
Who sang as sweet, and soar'd as strong,
As ever child of air?

His plume, his note, his form, could Burns
For whim or pleasure change;
He was not one, but all by turns,
With transmigration strange.

The Blackbird, oracle of spring,
When flow'd his moral lay;
The Swallow wheeling on the wing,
Capriciously at play:

The Humming-bird, from bloom to bloom,
Inhaling heavenly balm;
The Raven, in the tempest's gloom;
The Halcyon, in the calm:

In " auld Kirk Alloway, " the Owl,
At witching time of night;
By " bonnie Doon, " the earliest Fowl
That caroll'd to the light.

He was the Wren amidst the grove,
When in his homely vein;
At Bannockburn the Bird of Jove,
With thunder in his train:

The Woodlark, in his mournful hours;
The Goldfinch, in his mirth;
The Thrush, a spendthrift of his powers,
Enrapturing heaven and earth;

The Swan, in majesty and grace,
Contemplative and still;
But roused, — no Falcon, in the chase,
Could like his satire kill.

The Linnet in simplicity,
In tenderness the Dove;
But more than all beside was he
The Nightingale in love.

Oh! had he never stoop'd to shame,
Nor lent a charm to vice,
How had Devotion loved to name
That Bird of Paradise!

Peace to the dead! — In Scotia's choir
Of Minstrels great and small,
He sprang from his spontaneous fire,
The Phaenix of them all.