VOL. II. "The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield; O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, "There, in thy scanty mantle clad, But now the share up-tears thy bed, "Such is the fate of artless maid, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid "Such is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starred: Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, "Such fate to suffering worth is given, To misery's brink, Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven, "Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight 3 Who can fail to feel that this was "Indeed a genuine birth, Of poetry :-a bursting forth Of genius from the dust ?" What a strain of truth and imagination, manly and tender-hearted! Compare Burns with Pope in descriptive poetry,-comparison in other departments would be ill-judged, the grotto at Twickenham with the bleak Mossgeil mountain-side; and how redolent of nature is this little poem! It has the freshness and grateful odour that arises from the new furrows of a ploughed field. In that singular collection, the "Medical Remains of the great Lord Bacon," one of the fanciful prescriptions for the prolongation of life and the renewing of health was, in an early hour, after the sun is risen, to take an air from some high and open place with a ventilation of roses and fresh violets, and to stir the earth with infusion of wine and mint. Poetry in the eighteenth century seemed to need some such renovation; and, after her long confinement in the close air of an artificial system, the peasantpoet of Scotland ministered to her health. When Burns, in the rapt mood of inspiration, was standing with his hand on the plough, how little could he have dreamed that the music thus rising in his heart would wing its flight as far as the English language,—the spirit of every true Scotsman, whether in the centre of British India or at the farthest west of the wilds of America, kindling at the recollection of that one mountain-daisy! The criticism which more than any other delights me is that which may sometimes, though rarely, be discovered in the response made by the imagination of one poet to that of another. Some seven or eight years ago a great poet was travelling through that region of country which has earned even the title of The Land of Burns, and one of those itinerary records which the imagination of Wordsworth has scattered in every land he has visited is in these lines: "There!' said a stripling, pointing with meet pride Another poem, composed under the same circumstances as the "Mountain-Daisy," was that on turning up, with the plough, the nest of a field-mouse. It is conceived in the same vein of imagination, and of feeling the association of the mishaps of his own life with that of the little creature: "I'm truly sorry man's dominion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion The lesson of generosity, like mercy twic him that gives and him that takes,-is ex when he bids the wee thief welcome to corn: "I'll get a blessing wi' the lave, And never miss't!" "The Cotter's Saturday Night" was fi his brother as they walked together on a noon, a poem which, by its admirable s of reverence for holy things, a noble tribu piety, has best served to shield the p from harsh judgments on his frailties. quick apprehension, he was living a life him in close communion with nature; and, t lighted chiefly in portraying the stormy a elements, he did not overlook the minuter worthy also of a poet's eye, as in that admin humorous imagination and vigorous tho Brigs of Ayr," the couplet describing the ice: The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam, And then the passage, rising to a higher st after the talk of the Auld Brig and the New "What further clishmaclaver might been said, This fairy passage carries me in thought hastily to what Burns always thought, and rightly too, the best of all his productions, the matchless "Tam O'Shanter." Short as it is, it is a great poem, with merits unassailable by the most rigid criticism, and which the most enthusiastic cannot exaggerate. It is wonderful, especially for the power which harmonizes the terrific and the laughable,a Shakearian blending of tragedy and comedy. It was the work of a single day, composed by the river-side, where his wife found the bard crooning to himself, and soon, with strange and wild gestures, in a fit of ungovernable joy, bursting out loudly in one of the most animated passages. There is great dramatic power in the poem:the spirited introduction of the hero; the first allusion to the bewitched spot he was to pass by; the forewarning of witchcraft in his wife's affectionate and cheerful predictions; "She prophesied that, late or soon, Thou would be found deep drowned in Doon; The arch reference to lengthy conjugal counsels ;– "Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet, The husband frae the wife despises !" The convivial exultation of the reprobate and his cronies, set forth in two lines, the most vivid that revelry was ever told in : Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, O'er a' the ills o' life victorious." |