tion as a poet, but as food for his heart as a man. Hence, when inspired to compose poetry, poetry came gushing up from the well of his human affections, and he had nothing more to do than to pour it, like streams irrigating a meadow, in many a cheerful tide over the drooping flowers and fading verdure of life. Imbued with vivid perceptions, warm feelings, and strong passions, he sent his own existence into that of all things, animate and inanimate, around him; and not an occurrence in hamlet, village, or town, affecting in any way the happiness of the human heart, but roused as keen an interest in the soul of Burns, and as genial a sympathy, as if it had immediately concerned himself and his own individual welfare. Most other poets of rural life have looked on it through the aerial veil of imagination-often beautified, no doubt, by such partial concealment, and beaming with misty softness more delicate than the truth. But Burns would not thus indulge his fancy where he had felt-felt so poignantly, all the agonies and all the transports of life. He looked around him, and when he saw the smoke of the cottage rising up quietly and unbroken to heaven, he knew, for he had seen and blessed it, the quiet joy and unbroken contentment that slept below; and when he saw it driven and dispersed by the winds, he knew also but too well, for too sorely had he felt them, those agitations and disturbances which had shook him till he wept on his chaff bed. In reading his poetry, therefore, we know what unsubstantial dreams are all those of the golden age. But bliss beams upon us with a more subduing brightness through the dim melancholy that shrouds lowly life; and when the peasant Burns rises up in his might as Burns the poet, and is seen to derive all that might from the life which at this hour the peasantry of Scotland are leading, our hearts leap within us, because that such is our country, and such the nobility of her children. There is no delusion, no affectation, no exaggeration, no falsehood, in the spirit of Burns's poetry. He rejoices like an untamed enthusiast, and he weeps like a pros trate penitent. In joy and in grief the whole man appears: some of his finest effusions were poured out before he left the fields of his childhood, and when he scarcely hoped for other auditors than his own heart, and the simple dwellers of the hamlet. He wrote not to please or surprise others-we speak of those first effusions-but in his own creative delight; and even after he had discovered his power to kindle the sparks of nature wherever they slumbered, the effect to be produced seldom seems to have been considered by him, assured that his poetry could not fail to produce the same passion in the hearts of other men from which it boiled over in his own. Out of himself, and beyond his own nearest and dearest concerns, he well could, but he did not much love often or long to go. His imagination wanted not wings broad and strong for highest flights. But he was most at home when walking on this earth, through this world, even along the banks and braes of the streams of Coila. It seems as if his muse were loath to admit almost any thought, feeling, or image, drawn from any other region than his native district-the hearth-stone of his father's hut-the still or troubled chamber of his own generous and passionate bosom. Dear to him the jocund laughter of the reapers on the corn-field, the tears and sighs which his own strains had won from the children of nature enjoying the mid-day hour of rest be neath the shadow of the hedgerow tree. With what pathetic personal power, from all the circumstances of his character and condition, do many of his humblest lines affect us! Often, too often, as we hear him singing, we think that we see him suffering! Most musical, most melancholy' he often is, even in his merriment! In him, alas! the transports of inspiration are but too closely allied with reality's kindred agonies! The strings of his lyre sometimes yield their finest music to the sighs of remorse or repentance. Whatever, therefore, be the faults or defects of the poetry of Burns-and no doubt it has many-it has, beyond all that was ever written, this greatest of all merits, intense, life-pervading, and life-breathing truth.” TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY, On turning one down with the plough in April, 1786. Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, To spare thee now is past my power, Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' speckled breast, When upward-springing, blythe, to greet The purpling east. Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth: Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Such fate to suffering worth is given, To misery's brink, Till, wrench'd of every stay but Heaven, E'en thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, Till, crush'd beneath the furrow's weight, TO MARY IN HEAVEN.1 Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, Again thou usher'st in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary! dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? Seest thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? That sacred hour can I forget, Can I forget the hallow'd grove, Where by the winding Ayr we met, To live one day of parting love? Eternity will not efface Those records dear of transports past; Thy image at our last embrace! Ah, little thought we 'twas our last! Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods, thickening green., Twined amorous round the raptured scent; Till too, too soon, the glowing west Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, As streams their channels deeper wear. 1 This was the first object of his early, pure, impassioned love-Mary Campbell, or his "Highland Mary." In his poem, "Ye banks, and braes, and streams around ne describes, in the most beautiful language, their tender and final parting on the banks of the Ayr. He intended to marry her, but she died at Greenock on her return from a visit to her relations in Argyleshire. At a later period of life, on the anniversary of that hallowed day when they parted, ho devoted a night to a poetic vigil in the open air. As evening came, "he appeared to grow very sat about something," and wandered out of doors into the barn-yard, where his Jean found him lying on some straw with his eyes fixed on a shining star "like another moon." Thus did he write down, as it now is, in its immortal beauty, this deeply pathetic elegy to the memory of his "Highland Mary.' My Mary, dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? Seest thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? LESSONS FOR LIFE. Thou whom chance may hither lead, Be thou clad in russet weed, Be thou deck'd in silken stole, 'Grave these counsels on thy soul. Life is but a day at most, Sprung from night, in darkness lost; Fear not clouds will always lower. As Youth and Love, with sprightly dance, Beneath thy morning-star advance, Pleasure, with her siren air, May delude the thoughtless pair: As thy day grows warm and high, Dost thou spurn the humble vale? Life's proud summits wouldst thou scale? Evils lurk in felon wait: Soar around each cliffy hold, While cheerful Peace, with linnet song, As the shades of evening close, There ruminate with sober thought, On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought; And teach the sportive younkers round, Saws of experience, sage and sound. Say, man's true, genuine estimate, The grand criterion of his fate, Thus resign'd and quiet, creep Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake, THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. My loved, my honor'd, much respected friend! My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise: To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene; This night his weekly moil3 is at an end, Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. At length his lonely cot appears in view, Beneath the shelter of an aged tree; Th' expectant wee things, toddlin,5 stachers through His wee bit ingle,8 blinkin9 bonnily. His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, The lisping infant prattling on his knee, Does a 10 his weary carking 11 cares beguile, An' makes him quite forget his labor and his toil. Belyve 12 the elder bairns come drappin in, Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw 16 new gown, To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 1 These beautiful lines were written in "Friars-Carse" Hermitage, on the banks of the Nith. 8 Fire 2 From. 3 Labor. 4 Little. 5 Tottering in their walk. 6 Stagger. 7 Fluttering. 10 All. 11 Consuming. 12 By-and-by. 18 Drive. 14 Cautious. 16 Fine, handsome. 17 Sorely won. 18 Wages. Shining at intervals. |