One sea-picture, and one alone, is to be found in Burns, and this, it
is freely admitted, is exquisite:
'Behold the hour, the boat arrive;
Thou goest, thou darling of my heart!
Severed from thee, can I survive?
But fate has willed, and we must part.
I'll often greet this surging swell,
Yon distant isle will often hail:
E'en here I took the last farewell;
There latest marked her vanished sail.
Along the solitary shore,
While flitting sea-fowl round me cry,
Across the rolling, dashing roar,
I'll westward turn my wistful eye:
Happy thou Indian grove, I'll say,
Where now my Nancy's path may be!
While through thy sweets she loves to stray,
Oh! tell me, does she muse on me?'
This charming lyric, the pathetic tenderness of which commends it to
every feeling heart, is all that Burns has left in evidence that the
sea had to him, at least, one poetic aspect.
CURIOSITIES OF CHESS.
More has perhaps been written about chess-playing than any other of
the games which human ingenuity has invented for recreative purposes,
and it is not easy to foresee the time when dissertation or discovery
on the subject shall be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
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