Birmingham state herald., 1896-01-26
ROBERT BURNS.

Yesterday was the birth day of the poet of poets of the human heart, Robert Burns, whom humanity never had kinder friend nor truer interpreter. The following beautiful tribute was given to the State Herald yesterday
 Where Ganges rolls his yellow tide," Where bless'd Columbus waters glide, Old Scotia's sons, spread far and wide,
 Shall oft rehearse
 With sorrow some, but all with pride,
 Thy witchng verse;"
 Robert Burns, whose natal day will be celebrated wherever the English language is spoken, was natures poet. and truly the poet of the heart. He was of a most com passionate nature and sympathized with did not like Byron, Hay his hand upon the oceans mane." talk with the thunder, nor weave garland of the lightning's wing" but the wounded hare, the mountain daisy, Wee modest, crimson. tipped fiower," and The bonnie lark, companion meet "The banks and braes o'bonnie Doon," the Wee sleeket, covrn, timirous beaste," the mouse, things with which we are all famil- far, were his theme. His love. and rever- ence for home is shown in one of his epistles to a friend, where he says:
 "To make happy freside cline,
 To weans and wife
 That's the true pathos and sublime
 Of human life"
 His "Cotters Saturday Night" will live forever as the very highest type of a Christian home. And it is Prom scenes like these, old Scotias gran
 deur springs" That makes her loved at home, revered
 abroad"
 "A mans man for a that" one of the noblest effusions ever poured forth from the soul of man. is said to be paraphrase of the declaration of independence. Burns was human and had his faults, but much might be said in extenuation of them, did we know more of some of the peculiar cphases of Scottish life in his day. We all .know from his poems how bitterly he re+ tpented and blamed no one but himself for his follies, and time has proved that they were much maglitied. ,-5 -.-s' -4 For many see the damning sins. They lightly blame on slight acquaintance. But see not the agony. of grief That proved his passionate repentance" l shall close this short sketch by quoting James Montgomery's exquisite lines on Burns:
 What bird in beauty, flight or song,
 Can with the bard compare,
 Who sang as sweet and scared as strong As ever child of air
 His plume,rhis note his form could Burns
 For whimsor pleasure change; Ho was not one, but all by turns
 With uansmigration strange. The blaclbird oriche of spring,
 When How'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 tempests gloom,
 The halcyon in the calm.
 In 'auld Kirk Alloway the owl,
 At witching time of night:
 By bonnie Doon,' the earliest fowl
 That caroed to the light.
 He was the wren amidst the grove,
 When in his homely vein:
 At Bannockburn the bird of love,
 With thunder in his train.
 The woodlark in his mournful hours,
 The goldfnch in his mirth,
 The thrush, a spendthrift of his powers
 Enrapturing heaven and earth. The swan in majesty and grace,
 Contemplative and still:
 But reused 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-"