'We'll gar our streams and burnies shine Up wi' the best. We'll sing auld Coila's plains an' fells, Her moors red-brown wi' heather-bells, Her banks an' braes, her dens an' dells.' Amply did he fulfil his promise. There is not a river, hardly even a tributary, within his reach, that has not been made famous in his lyrics. In the first bloom of opening manhood it was the Ayr and the Doon that gave him inspiration, and when broken in health and spirits, and with an early grave opening before him, it was by the banks of the Nith that his last poetic impulse arose. In his relation to Nature there was this great difference between Burns and his literary contemporaries and immediate predecessors, that whereas even the best of them wrote rather as pleased spectators of the country, with all its infinite variety of form and colour, of life and sound, of calm and storm, he sang as one into whose very inmost heart the power of these things had entered. For the first time in English literature the burning ardour of a passionate soul went out in tumultuous joy towards Nature. The hills and woods, the streams and dells were to Burns not merely enjoyable scenes to be visited and described. They became part of his very being. In their changeful aspects he found the counterpart of his own variable moods; they ministered to his joys, they soothed his sorrows. They yielded him a companionship that never palled, a sympathy that never failed. They kindled his poetic ardour, and became themselves the subjects of his song. He loved them with all the overpowering intensity of his affectionate nature, and his feelings found vent in an exuberance of appreciation which had never before been heard in verse. Among the natural objects which exerted this potent sway over the poetry of Burns, the streams of Ayrshire and Nithsdale ever held a foremost place. Their banks were his favourite haunt for reverie. They were familiar to him under every change of sky and season, from firth to fell. Each feature in their seaward course was noted by his quick eye, and treasured in his loving memory. Their union of ruggedness and verdure, of sombre woods and open haughs, of dark cliff and bright meadow, of brawling current and stealthy flow, furnished that variety which captivated his fancy, and found such fitting transposition to his verse. His descriptions and allusions, however, are never laboured and prominent; they are dashed off with the careless ease of a master-artist, whose main theme is the portrayal of human feeling. Even when the banks and braes have been the immediate source of his inspiration, Burns quickly passes from them into the world of emotion to which he makes them subservient. So numerous and descriptive are his allusions to them that a luminous account of the characteristics of the Carrick brooks and rivers might easily be compiled from Burns' poems. At one moment we find him appealing to them for sympathy in his grief: