Their titles a' are empty show; Within the glen sae bushy, O, Oh were yon hills and valleys mine, But fickle Fortune frowns on me, Although through foreign climes I range, For her I'll dare the billows' roar, She has my heart, she has my hand, 'Till the mortal stroke shall lay me low, I'm thine, my Highland lassie, O. Farewell the glen sae bushy, O! A PRAYER FOR MARY. The following song, which was found amongst the poet's manuscripts after his death, answers perfectly to the circumstances and feelings which have been represented. POWERS celestial! whose protection, Let my Mary be your care: Let my Mary's kindred spirit Draw your choicest influence down. Make the gales you waft around her Guardian angels! oh, protect her When in distant lands I roam; Make her bosom still my home. WILL YE GO TO THE INDIES, MY Burns told Mr. Thomson in 1792: "In my very early years, when I was thinking of going to the West Indies, I took the following farewell of a dear girl.” WILL ye go to the Indies, my Mary, And leave auld Scotia's shore? 1 The first verse is not to be read as expressing a desire of the poet that Mary should accompany him to the West Indies; the rest of the poem makes the idea of a parting and farewell quite clear. The verse is to be accepted simply as a variation of the song whose air was adopted - Will ye go to the Ewe-buchts, Marion? But for the phrases, "very early life," and "my very early years," there could be no difficulty in assigning My Highland Lassie and Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary? which is evidently another expression of the same passion, to the date 1786; but Mr. Douglas argues, that either Burns felt as if the lapse of six years had brought him out of youth into middle life, or he wished to maintain a mystery regarding the story of Mary. Oh sweet grow the lime and the orange, And the apple on the pine; But a' the charms o' the Indies Can never equal thine. I hae sworn by the Heavens to my Mary, Oh plight me your faith, my Mary, We hae plighted our troth, my Mary, And curst be the cause that shall part us, ELIZA. TUNE- Gilderoy. It is to be feared that Burns was not a man for whom his admirers can safely claim steadiness of affection, any more than they can arrogate for him a romantic or platonic delicacy. It appears as if there was still another maiden high in his book of passion during this agitating period. Of her he takes leave in terms nearly resembling those employed in the Highland Lassie, and which involve the same allusions regarding his own approaching exile from his native land. FROM thee, Eliza, I must go, And from my native shore: Farewell, farewell, Eliza dear, That throb, Eliza, is thy part, And thine that latest sigh! |