The Memory Of Burns

How sweetly come the holy psalms     From saints and martyrs down,     The waving of triumphal palms     Above the thorny crown     The choral praise, the chanted prayers     From harps by angels strung,     The hunted Cameron's mountain airs,     The hymns that Luther sung!     Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes,     The sounds of earth are heard,     As through the open minster floats     The song of breeze and bird     Not less the wonder of the sky     That daisies bloom below;     The brook sings on, though loud and high     The cloudy organs blow!     And, if the tender ear be jarred     That, haply, hears by turns     The saintly harp of Olney's bard,     The pastoral pipe of Burns,     No discord mars His perfect plan     Who gave them both a tongue;     For he who sings the love of man     The love of God hath sung!     To-day be every fault forgiven     Of him in whom we joy     We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven     And leave the earth's alloy.     Be ours his music as of spring,     His sweetness as of flowers,     The songs the bard himself might sing     In holier ears than ours.     Sweet airs of love and home, the hum     Of household melodies,     Come singing, as the robins come     To sing in door-yard trees.     And, heart to heart, two nations lean,     No rival wreaths to twine,     But blending in eternal green     The holly and the pine