sometimes it looks, as it looked to-night, interminable, a way
leading right into the heart of the red sundown; sometimes, again,
it shrinks together, as if for warmth, on one of the withering,
clear east-windy days, until it seems to lie underneath your feet.

I want to let you see these verses from an ODE TO THE CUCKOO,
written by one of the ministers of Leith in the middle of last
century - the palmy days of Edinburgh - who was a friend of Hume
and Adam Smith and the whole constellation. The authorship of
these beautiful verses has been most truculently fought about; but
whoever wrote them (and it seems as if this Logan had) they are
lovely -


'What time the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fliest the vocal vale,
An annual guest, in other lands
Another spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.

O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make on joyful wing
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring.'