The breathless flocks draw to the shade
And freschure' of their fauld;

The startling nolt, as they were mad,
Run to the rivers cald.

The herds beneath some leafy trees,

Amidst the flow'rs they lie;

The stable ships upon the seas

Tend up their sails to dry.

The hart, the hind, the fallow deer,

Are tapish'd' at their rest;

The fowls and birds that made thee beare*,

Prepare their pretty nest.

The rayons dure 5 descending down,

All kindle in a gleid ";

In city, nor in burrough town,

May nane set forth their head.

Back from the blue pavemented whun',
And from ilk plaster wall,

1 Freshness.-2 Oxen.-3 Carpeted.-4 Beare, I suppose, means music. To beare, in old Scotch, is to recite. Wynton, in his Chronicle, says, "As I have heard men beare on hand.”—5 Hard, or keen rays.-6 Fire.-7 Whinstone.

The hot reflexing of the sun
Inflames the air and all.

The labourers that timely rose,
All weary, faint, and weak,

For heat down to their houses goes',
Noon-meite and sleep to take.

The callour2 wine in cave is sought,
Men's brothing breasts to cool;
The water cold and clear is brought,
And sallads steep'd in ule*.

With gilded eyes and open wings,
The cock his courage shows;

With claps of joy his breast he dings",

And twenty times he crows.

The dove with whistling wings so blue,
The winds can fast collect,

Her purple pens turn many a hue
Against the sun direct.

Now noon is gone-gone is midday,
The heat does slake at last,

The sun descends down west away,
For three o'clock is past.

In old Scottish poetry little attention is paid to giving plural nouns a plural verb.-2 Cool.-3 Burning.-4 Oil.-5 Beats.

The rayons of the sun we see
Diminish in their strength,

The shade of every tower and tree
Extended is in length.

Great is the calm, for every where
The wind is setting down,

The reek' throws up right in the air,
From every tower and town.

The mavis and the philomeen,
The sterling whistles loud,

3

The cushats on the branches green,
Full quietly they crood*.

The glomin' comes, the day is spent,

The sun goes out of sight,

And painted is the occident

With purple sanguine bright.

The scarlet nor the golden thread,

Who would their beauty try,

Are nothing like the colour red
And beauty of the sky.

Smoke.. -2 Thrush and nightingale. -3 Wood-pigeons.4 A very expressive word for the note of the cushat, or woodpigeon.-5 Evening.

1

What pleasure then to walk and see,

1

Endlang a river clear,

The perfect form of every tree

Within the deep appear.

2

The salmon out of cruives and creels3,

Uphailed into scouts *;

The bells and circles on the weills 5,
Through leaping of the trouts.

O sure it were a seemly thing,
While all is still and calm,

The praise of God to play and sing
With trumpet and with shalm.

Through all the land great is the gild
Of rustic folks that cry;

Of bleating sheep, fra they be fill'd,
Of calves and rowting kye.

All labourers draw hame at even,

And can to others say,

Thanks to the gracious God of Heaven,
Quhilk sent this summer day.

Along. Places for confining fish, generally placed in the dam of a river.-3 Baskets.-4 Small boats or yawls.—5 Wells.— Throng.-7 Who.

BORN 1558.-DIED ABOUT 1600.

THOMAS NASH was born at Lowenstoffe in Suffolk, was bred at Cambridge, and closed a calamitous life of authorship at the age of forty-two. Dr. Beloe' has given a list of his works, and Mr. D'Israeli2 an account of his shifts and miseries. Adversity seems to have whetted his genius, as his most tolerable verses are those which describe his own despair; and in the midst of his woes, he exposed to just derision the profound fooleries of the astrologer Harvey, who, in the year 1582, had thrown the whole kingdom into consternation by his predictions of the probable effects of the junction of Jupiter and Saturn. Drayton, in his Epistle of Poets and Poesy, says of him

Sharply satyric was he, and that way

He went, since that his being to this day,
Few have attempted, and I surely think,

These words shall hardly be set down with ink,
Shall blast and scorch so as his could.

From the allusion which he makes in the following quotation to Sir P. Sydney's compassion, before the introduction of the following lines, it may be conjectured that he had experienced the bounty of that noble character.

1 Anecdotes of Scarce Books.-2 Calamities of Authors.