"The primrose I will pu', the firstling o' the year, And I will pu' the pink, the emblem o' my dear; For she's the pink o' womankind, and blooms without a peer-- And a' to be a posie to my ain dear May. "The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair, And in her lovely bosom I'll place the lily there; The daisy's for simplicity and unaffected air-- And a' to be a posie to my ain dear May. "The hawthorn I will pu', wi' its locks o' siller grey, Where, like an aged man, it stands at break o' day; But the songster's nest within the bush I winna tak away-- And a' to be a posie to my ain dear May." Mark that line in italics, and ponder its exquisite tenderness. How it must have irradiated, like a sudden flood of sunshine over a mountain landscape, the poet's heart as he penned it! Here you have the germ of the doctrine afterwards more broadly taught by Coleridge in the well-known lines of the Ancient Mariner:-- "Farewell, farewell, but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding Guest, He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man, and bird, and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all." We love The Posie of Burns for its own sake, but we love it all the more, perhaps, because our attention was first directed to its sweet simplicity and tender beauty by one of our earliest and kindest friends, himself a poet of no mean order, the late Professor William Tennant, author of Anster Fair, in all its fantastical gaiety and homely mirth the most original poem, perhaps, to be found in the literature of our country.