"and I believe to most of their acquaintance, like the visits of good angels, are short and far between; but I meet them now and then as I jog through the hills of Nithsdale, just as I used to do on the banks of Ayr." Take as a sample some of the varying moods he passed through in the summer and autumn of 1789. In the May-time of that year an incident occurs, which the poet thus describes:--"One morning lately, as I was out pretty early in the fields, sowing some grass-seeds, I heard the burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded hare came hirpling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of them have young ones. Indeed there is something in the business of destroying, for our sport, individuals in the animal creation that (p. 107) do not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of virtue." The lad who fired the shot and roused the poet's indignation, was the son of a neighbouring farmer. Burns cursed him, and being near the Nith at the time, threatened to throw him into the river. He found, however, a more innocent vent for his feelings in the following lines:-- Inhuman man! curse on thy barbarous art, And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye! May never pity soothe thee with a sigh, Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart! Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, The bitter little that of life remains: No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield. Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest, No more of rest, but now thy dying bed! The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head, The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest. Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its woe; The playful pair crowd fondly by thy side; Ah! helpless nurslings, who will now provide That life a mother only can bestow! Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn, I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn, And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate. This, which is one of the best of the very few good poems which Burns composed in classical English, is no mere sentimental effusion, but expresses what in him was a real part of his nature--his tender feeling towards his lower fellow-creatures. The same feeling finds (p. 108) expression in the lines on _The Mouse_, _The Auld Farmer's Address to his Mare_, and _The Winter Night_, when, as he sits by his fireside, and hears the storm roaring without, he says,--