On wa's where now
Your apricock and peaches fine
Their branches bow.

Since human life is but a blink,
Then why should we its short joys sink;
He disna live that canna link
The glass about;
Whan warm'd wi' wine, like men we think,
An' grow mair stout.'

The 31st Ode (B. 1.) to Apollo is thus felicitously rendered--

'Frae great Apollo, poets say,
What would'st thou wish, what wadst thou hae
Whan thou bows at his shrine?
Not Carse o' Gowrie's fertile field,
Nor a' the flocks the Grampians yield
That are baith sleek and fine;
Not costly things, brocht frae afar,
As iv'ry, pearl and gems;
Nor those fair straths that watered are
Wi' Tay an' Tweed's smooth streams.
Which gentily and daintily
Eat down the flow'ry braes,
As greatly and quietly
They wimple to the seas.'

Ramsay had the misfortune never to have studied the _technique_ of his
art, so that in no respect is he a master of rhythm. The majority of his
longer poems, including _The Gentle Shepherd_, are written in the
ordinary heroic measure, so popular last century because so easily
manipulated. His songs for the most part are written in familiar metres,
not calculated to puzzle any bonny singing Bess as she danced and lilted
on the village green. As a metrist, therefore, Ramsay can claim little
or no attention. His poetry was the spontaneous ebullition of his own
feelings, and for their expression he seized upon the first measure that
came to hand.

Such, then, is Ramsay! In his matchless pastoral he will ever live in
the hearts of Scotsmen; and were proof needed, it would be found in the
increasing numbers of pilgrims who year by year journey to Carlops to
visit the scenes amongst which Peggy lived and loved. To any one save
the historian and the antiquarian, the remainder of his poetry may now
be of little value,--probably of none,--amidst the multifarious
publications which day by day issue from the press. But by Scotsmen the
memory of the gentle, genial, lovable Allan will ever be prized as that
of one who, at a critical time, did more to prevent Scottish national
poetry from being wholly absorbed by the mightier stream of English song
than any other man save Scott. Worthy of such veneration, then, is he,
both as a poet and as a ma