Clouds arrested in their swift course by lofty mountains, lakes that hold a mirror to the sky, songsters twittering o’er their young, waters glowing beneath western clouds, hoary-headed Grampius clad in snow, are counted among his pleasures. He prefers life in the country, for there All in the sacred, sweet, sequestered vale Of solitude, the secret primrose-path Of rural life, he dwells. He loved especially the Gairney, a stream that flows into Loch Leven, because, as a lad, he lay on its banks and composed poetry. He speaks with evident knowledge of other streams, the gulfy Po, “slow and silent among its waving reeds,” and the rapid Queech rushing impetuous over broken steeps. It is natural that Bruce should know, as he did, especially water birds. The “wild-shrieking gull,” “patient heron,” “dull bittern,” the “clamorous mew,” and the “slow-wing’d crane” moving heavily along the shore, were doubtless birds that he had often seen. Bruce’s pleasure in wide views is shown by this poem, “Lochleven,” for it is a description of the prospect spread out before him as he stands on “Mount Lomond.” Bruce’s “Elegy” was written when he felt himself dying of consumption. It represents his delight in all forms of Nature’s life and his deep melancholy at bidding farewell to the spring-time world. By a process of selection we find in Bruce’s poems his real love for the outer world. This is not, however, the impression made by his poems as a whole. His knowledge of Nature was limited, and his expression was often rigid and formal. He died young, before he had really attained the mastery of his own thought, and his importance lies not so much in actual accomplishment as in scattered suggestions of his tendencies and possibilities. Bruce’s most intimate friend was John Logan, who, in 1770, published an edition of Bruce’s poems and included some “wrote by other authors.” In 1781, when he published his own works, he laid claim to a number of the poems that had appeared in the edition of Bruce’s poems in 1770. Among these the most important was “The Cuckoo,”[443] a poem well worth the sharp controversy waged over it by the respective friends of the two authors. There is nothing else in this period that rings so fresh and clear as this little ode. One stanza may be quoted to illustrate its beauty, its simplicity, and naturalness. This stanza is also of peculiar interest because it so definitely foreshadows Wordsworth’s “To the Cuckoo.” The schoolboy, wandering through the wood, To pull the primrose gay, Starts, the new voice of spring to hear, And imitates thy lay.