“ Alas! sweetest Bard, shall the green turf we raise,
Be all the memorial to hand down thy name?
No other thou needest, thy strains are thy praise,
And these still shall render immortal thy fame.
⁠Glasgow, July 26, 1796.
⁠GENIUS of Scotia mourn!
⁠Cypress bestrew the urn
⁠Where Burns lies dead;
⁠No—Here the laurel gives
⁠Her never fading leaves
⁠To crown his head.
Scotia! tho' cold thy clime, tho' hard thy soil,
Where Nature fosters life by brawny toil—
Yet Genius lives—thy hills and rocks inspire
The Muses love, and force Poetic fire. ”

“ Since thou, pleasing Bard, first appear'd to our view;
Enlighten'd by Genius, true Genius alone;
Delighted we saw thee thy progress pursue.
II.
We beheld in thy strains the solemn and the gay;
To Nature still true they came home to the heart;
Despising the weak finely polished lay,
Thou cast far behind the refinements of art.
III.
But ah! what avail'd it that Heaven did bestow
A mind so capacious all Nature to scan;
Shall I point out those frailties which humbled thee low,
And levell'd thee down with the weakest of man. ”

“ Arrived at the Church yard Gate, the funeral party, according to the rules of that exercise, formed two lines, and leaned their heads on their firelocks pointed to the ground; through this space the corpse was carried; the party drew up along side of the grave, and after the interment, fired three vollies over it. The whole ceremony presented a solemn, grand, and affecting spectacle; and accorded with the general regret for the loss of a man, whose like we scarce can see again. ”