lison_, and _Mary Morison_. The two former are
inconsiderable; the latter is one of those pure and beautiful
love-lyrics, in the manner of the old ballads, which, as Hazlitt says,
"take the deepest and most lasting hold on the mind."

Yestreen, when to the trembling string,
The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha',
To thee my fancy took its wing,
I sat, but neither heard nor saw:
Tho' this was fair, and that was braw,
And yon the toast of a' the town,
I sigh'd, and said amang them a',
"Ye are na Mary Morison."

Oh, Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, (p. 013)
Wha for thy sake wad gladly die;
Or canst thou break that heart of his,
Whase only faut is loving thee?
If love for love thou wilt na gie,
At least be pity to me shown;
A thought ungentle canna be
The thought o' Mary Morison.

In these lines the lyric genius of Burns was for the first time
undeniably revealed.

But neither letters nor love-songs prevailed. The young woman, for
some reason untold, was deaf to his entreaties, and the rejection of
this his best affection fell on him with a malign influence, just as
he was setting his face to learn a trade which he hoped would enable
him to maintain a wife.

Irvine was at that time a centre of the flax-dressing art, and as
Robert and his brother raised flax on their farm, they hoped that if
they could dress as well as grow flax, they might thereby double their
profits. As he met with this heavy disappointment in love just as he
was setting out for Irvine, he went thither downhearted and depressed,
at Midsummer, 1781. All who met him at that time were struck with his
look of melancholy, and his moody silence, from which he roused
himself only when in pleasant female society, or when he met with men
of intelligence. But the persons of this sort whom he met in Irvine
were probably few. More numerous were the smugglers and rough-living
adventurers with which that seaport town, as Kirkoswald, swarmed.
Among these he contracted, says Gilbert, "some acquaintance of a freer
manner of thinking and living than he had been used to, whose society
prepared him for over-leaping the bonds of rigid virtue which had
hitherto restrained him." One companion, a sailor-lad of wild life (p. 014)
and loose and irregu