MUTE is thy wild harp, now, O bard sublime! <br />Who, amid Scotia's mountain solitude, <br />Great Nature taught to 'build the lofty rhyme,' <br />And even beneath the daily pressure, rude, <br />Of labouring poverty, thy generous blood, <br />Fired with the love of freedom--Not subdued <br />Wert thou by thy low fortune: but a time <br />Like this we live in, when the abject chime <br />Of echoing parasite is best approved, <br />Was not for thee--Indignantly is fled <br />Thy noble spirit; and no longer moved <br />By all the ills o'er which thine heart has bled, <br />Associate, worthy of the illustrious dead, <br />Enjoys with them 'the liberty it loved.'<br /><br />Charlotte Smith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-lxxxii-to-the-shade-of-burns/