"I would have thee live;For in my sense it is happiness to die."
When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries:
"Let it not be believed for womanhood;Think! we had mothers."
Ophelia, in her madness, "the sweet bells jangled out o' tune," says softly:
"I would give you some violets;But they withered all when my father died."
When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown by his murderous hand, he exclaims,—and what could be more pitiful?
"I 'gin to be aweary of the sun."
Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or to have been, a king, or to receive honors before or after power is lost; and so, of those who stood uncovered before him, he asks this piteous question:
"I live with bread, like you; feel want,Taste grief, need friends; subjected thus,How can you say to me I am a king?"
Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Cæsar:
"Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth."
When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered by Posthumus to murder her, she bares her neck and cries:
"The lamb entreats the butcher:Where is thy knife? Thou art too slowTo do thy master's bidding when I desire it."
Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted wound, utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this:
"I here importune death awhile, untilOf many thousand kisses the poor lastI lay upon thy lips."
To me, the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos:
"I die, Horatio.The potent poison quite o' er crows my spirit...The rest is silence."
XVI.
SOME have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a physician, for the reason that he shows such knowledge of medicine—of the symptoms of disease and death—was so familiar with the brain, and with insanity in all its forms.
I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much—his generalizations were too splendid. He had none of the prejudices of that profession in his time. We might as well say that he was a musician, a composer, because we find in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" nearly every musical term known in Shakespeare's time.
Others maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted with the forms, with the expressions familiar to that profession—yet there is nothing to show that he was a lawyer, or that he knew more about law than any intelligent man should know.
He was not a lawyer. His sense of justice was never dulled by reading English law.
Some think that he was a botanist, because he named nearly all known plants. Others, that he was an astronomer, a naturalist, because he gave hints and suggestions of nearly all discoveries.
Some have thought that he must have been a sailor, for the reason that the orders given in the opening of "The Tempest" were the best that could, under the circumstances, have been given to save the ship.
For my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show that he was a lawyer, doctor, botanist or scientist. He had the observant eyes that really see, the ears that really hear, the brain that retains all pictures, all thoughts, logic as unerring as light,-the imagination that supplies defects and builds the perfect from a fragment. And these faculties, these aptitudes, working together, account for what he did.
He exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his imagination. To him the whole world paid tribute, and nature poured her treasures at his feet. In him all races lived again, and even those to be were pictured in his brain.
He was a man of imagination—that is to say, of genius, and having seen a leaf, and a drop of water, he could construct the forests, the rivers, and the seas—and in his presence all the cataracts would fall and foam, the mists rise, the clouds form and float.
If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and its neighbors. Looking at a coat of mail, he instantly imagined the society, the conditions, that produced it and what it, in turn, produced. He saw the castle, the moat, the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly lover spurring across the plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of feudal life.
He lived the life of all.
He was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He listened to the eager eloquence of the great orators, and sat upon the cliffs, and with the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He saw Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of falsehood. He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and met the night of death, tranquil as a star meets morning. He listened to the peripatetic philosophers, and was unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched Phidias as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.
He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knew the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He heard great Memnon's morning song when marble lips were smitten by the sun. He laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead, and felt within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and suffocating doubts—the children born of long delay.
He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Cæsar with his legions in the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls, when from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life.
He lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests' silent depths, and in the desperate game of life or death he matched his thought against the instinct of the beast.
He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their rich rewards. He was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued, outcast and king. He heard the applause and curses of the world, and on his heart had fallen all the nights and noons of failure and success.
He knew the unspoken thoughts, the dumb desires, the wants and ways of beasts. He felt the crouching tiger's thrill, the terror of the ambushed prey, and with the eagles he had shared the ecstasy of flight and poise and swoop, and he had lain with sluggish serpents on the barren rocks uncoiling slowly in the heat of noon.
He sat beneath the bo-tree's contemplative shade, wrapped in Buddha's mighty thought, and dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, has wrought from dust and dew, and stored within the slumbrous poppy's subtle blood.
He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine—he offered every sacrifice, and every prayer—felt the consolation and the shuddering fear—mocked and worshiped all the gods—enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell.
He lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there crept the shadow and the chill of every death, and his soul, like Mazeppa, was lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate.
The Imagination had a stage in. Shakespeare's brain, whereon were set all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and where his players bodied forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the careless shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.
From Shakespeare's brain there poured a Niagara of gems spanned by Fancy's seven-hued arch. He was as many-sided as clouds are many-formed. To him giving was hoarding—sowing was harvest—and waste itself the source of wealth. Within his marvelous mind were the fruits of all thought past, the seeds of all to be. As a drop of dew contains the image of the earth and sky, so all there is of life was mirrored forth in Shakespeare's brain.
Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit with the eternal stars—an intellectual ocean—towards which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive their dew and rain.
* This lecture is printed from notes found among ColonelIngersoll's papers, but was not revised by him forpublication.
A facsimile of the original manuscript as written by Colonel Ingersoll in the Burns' cottage at Ayr, August 19, 1878.
Burn's Manuscript
We have met to-night to honor the memory of a poet—possibly the next to the greatest that has ever written in our language. I would place one above him, and only one—Shakespeare.
It may be well enough at the beginning to inquire, What is a poet? What is poetry?
Every one has some idea of the poetic, and this idea is born of his experience—of his education—of his surroundings.
There have been more nations than poets.
Many people suppose that poetry is a kind of art depending upon certain rules, and that it is only necessary to find out these rules to be a poet. But these rules have never been found. The great poet follows them unconsciously. The great poet seems as unconscious as Nature, and the product of the highest art seems to have been felt instead of thought.
The finest definition perhaps that has been given is this:
"As nature unconsciously produces that which appears to be the result of consciousness, so the greatest artist consciously produces that which appears the unconscious result."
Poetry must rest on the experience of men—the history of heart and brain. It must sit by the fireside of the heart. It must have to do with this world, with the place in which we live, with the men and women we know, with their loves, their hopes, their fears and their joys.
After all, we care nothing about gods and goddesses, or folks with wings.
The cloud-compelling Jupiters, the ox-eyed Junos, the feather-heeled Mercurys, or the Minervas that leaped full-armed from the thick skull of some imaginary god, are nothing to us. We know nothing of their fears or loves, and for that reason, the poetry that deals with them, no matter how ingenious it may be, can never touch the human heart.
I was taught that Milton was a wonderful poet, and above all others sublime. I have read Milton once. Few have read him twice.
With splendid words, with magnificent mythological imagery, he musters the heavenly militia—puts epaulets on the shoulders of God, and describes the Devil as an artillery officer of the highest rank.
Then he describes the battles in which immortals undertake the impossible task of killing each other.
Take this line:
"Flying with indefatigable wings over the vast abrupt."
This is called sublime, but what does it mean?
We have been taught that Dante was a wonderful poet.
He described with infinite minuteness the pangs and agonies endured by the damned in the torture—dungeons of God.
The vicious twins of superstition—malignity and solemnity—struggle for the mastery in his revengeful lines.
But there was one good thing about Dante: he had the courage, and what might be called the religious democracy, to see a pope in hell.
That is something to be thankful for.
So, the sonnets of Petrarch are as unmeaning as the promises of candidates. They are filled not with genuine passion, but with the feelings that lovers are supposed to have.
Poetry cannot be written by rule; it is nota trade, or a profession. Let the critics lay down the laws, and the true poet will violate them all.
By rule you can make skeletons, but you cannot clothe them with flesh, put blood in their veins, thoughts in their eyes, and passions in their hearts.
This can be done only by following the impulses of the heart, the winged fancies of the brain—by wandering from paths and roads, keeping step with the rhythmic ebb and flow of the throbbing blood.
In the olden time in Scotland, most of the so-called poetry was written by pedagogues and parsons—gentlemen who found out what little they knew of the living world by reading the dead languages—by studying epitaphs in the cemeteries of literature.
They knew nothing of any life that they thought poetic. They kept as far from the common people as they could. They wrote countless verses, but no poems. They tried to put metaphysics, that is to say, Calvinism, in poetry.
As a matter of fact, a Calvinist cannot be a poet. Calvinism takes all the poetry out of the world.
If the existence of the Calvinistic, the Christian, hell could be demonstrated, another poem never could be written. .
In those days they made poetry about geography, and the beauties of the Scotch Kirk, and even about law.
The critics have always been looking for mistakes, not beauties—not for the perfection of expression and feeling. They would object to the lark and nightingale because they do not sing by note—to the clouds because they are not square.
At one time it was thought that scenery, the grand in nature, made the poet. We now know that the poet makes the scenery. Holland has produced far more genius than the Alps. Where nature is prodigal—where the crags tower above the clouds—man is overcome, or overawed. In England and Scotland the hills are low, and there is nothing in the scenery calculated to rouse poetic blood, and yet these countries have produced the greatest literature of all time.
The truth is that poets and heroes make the scenery. The place where man has died for man is grander than all the snow-crowned summits of the world.
A poem is something like a mountain stream that flashes in light, then lost in shadow, leaps with a kind of wild joy into the abyss, emerges victorious, and winding runs amid meadows, lingers in quiet places, holding within its breast the hills and vales and clouds—then running by the cottage door, babbling of joy, and murmuring delight, then sweeping on to join its old mother, the sea.
Thousands, millions of men live poems, but do not write them; but every great poem has been lived.
I say to-night that every good and self-denying man, every one who lives and labors for those he loves, for wife and child, is living a poem. The loving mother rocking a cradle, singing the slumber song, lives a poem pure and tender as the dawn; the man who bares his breast to shot and shell lives a poem, and all the great men of the world, and all the brave and loving women have been poets in action, whether they have written one word or not. The poor woman of the tenement, sewing, blinded by tears, lives a poem holier, it may be, than the fortunate can know. The pioneers—the home builders, the heroes of toil, are all poets, and their deeds are filled with the pathos and perfection of the highest art.
But to-night we are going to talk of a poet—one who poured out his soul in song. How does a country become great? By producing great poets. Why is it that Scotland, when the roll of nations is called, can stand up and proudly answer "here"? Because Robert Burns has lived. It is Robert Burns that put Scotland in the front rank.
On the 25th of January, 1759, Robert Burns was born. William Burns, a gardener, his father; Agnes Brown, his mother. He was born near the little town of Ayr, in a little cottage made of mud and thatched with straw. From the first, poverty was his portion,—"Poverty, the half-sister of Death." The father struggled as best he could, but at last overcome more by misfortunes than by disease, died in 1784, at the age of 63. Robert attended school at Alloway Mill, and had been taught a little by John Murdock, and some by his father. That was his education—with this exception, that whenever nature produces a genius, the old mother holds him close to her heart and whispers secrets to his ears that others do not know.
He had spent most of his time working on a farm, raising very poor crops, getting deeper and deeper into debt, until finally the death of his father left him to struggle as best he might for himself.
In the year 1759, Scotland was emerging from the darkness and gloom of Calvinism. The attention of the people had been drawn from the other world, or rather from the other worlds, to the affairs of this. The commercial spirit, the interests of trade, were winning men from the discussion of predestination and the sacred decrees of God. Mechanics and manufacturers were undermining theology. The influence of the clergy was gradually diminishing, and the beggarly elements of this life were beginning to attract the attention of the Scotch. The people at that time were mostly poor. They had made but little progress in art and science. They had been engaged for many years fighting for their political or theological rights, or to destroy the rights of others. They had great energy, great natural sense, and courage without limit, and it may be well enough to add that they were as obstinate as brave.
Several countries have had a metaphysical peasantry. It is true of parts of Switzerland about the time of Calvin. In Holland, after the people had suffered all the cruelties that Spain could inflict, they began to discuss as to foreordination and free will, and upon these questions destroyed each other. The same is true of New England, and peculiarly true of Scotland—a metaphysical peasantry—men who lived in mud houses thatched with straw and discussed the motives of God and the means by which the Infinite Being was to accomplish his ends.
For many years the Scotch had been ruled by the clergy. The power of the Scotch preacher was unlimited. It so happened that the religion of Scotland became synonymous with patriotism, and those who were fighting Scotland were also fighting her religion. This drew priest and people together; and the priest naturally took advantage of the situation. They not only determined upon the policy to be pursued by the people, but they went into every detail of life. And in this world there has never been established a more odious tyranny or a more odious form of government than that of the Scotch Kirk.
A few men had made themselves famous—David Hume, Adam Smith, Doctor Hugh Blair, he of the grave, Beattie and Ramsay, Reid and Robertson—but the great body of the people were orthodox to the last drop of their blood. Nothing seemed to please them like attending church, like hearing sermons. Before Communion Sabbath they frequently met on Friday, having two or three sermons on that day, three or four on Saturday, more if possible on Sunday, and wound up with a kind of gospel spree on Monday. They loved it. I think it was Heinrich Heine who said, "It is not true, it is not true that the damned in hell are compelled to hear all the sermons preached on earth." He says this is not true. This shows that there is some mercy even in hell. They were infinitely interested in these questions.
And yet, the people were social, fond of games, of outdoor sports, full of song and story, and no folks ever passed the cup with a happier smile.
Sometimes I have thought that they were saved from the gloom of Calvinism by the use of intoxicating liquors. It may be that John Barleycorn redeemed the Scotch and saved them from the divine dyspepsia of the Calvinistic creed. So, too, it may be that the Puritan was saved by rum, and the Hollander by schnapps. Yet, in spite of the gloom of the creed, in spite of the climate of mists and fogs, and the maniac winters, the songs of Scotland are the sweetest and the tenderest in all the world.
Robert Burns was a peasant—a ploughman—a poet. Why is it that millions and millions of men and women love this man? He was a Scotchman, and all the tendrils of his heart struck deep in Scotland's soil. He voiced the ideals of the best and greatest of his race and blood. And yet he is as dear to the citizens of this great Republic as to Scotia's sons and daughters.
All great poetry has a national flavor. It tastes of the soil. No matter how great it is, how wide, how universal, the flavor of locality is never lost. Burns made common life beautiful. He idealized the sun-burnt girls who worked in the fields. He put honest labor above titled idleness. He made a cottage far more poetic than a palace. He painted the simple joys and ecstasies and raptures of sincere love. He put native sense above the polish of schools.
We love him because he was independent, sturdy, self-poised, social, generous, susceptible, thrilled by a look, by a touch, full of pity, carrying the sorrows of others in his heart, even those of animals; hating to see anybody suffer, and lamenting the death of everything—even of trees and flowers. We love him because he was a natural democrat, and hated tyranny in every form.
We love him because he was always on the side of the people, feeling the throb of progress.
Burns read but little, had but few books; had but a little of what is called education; had only an outline of history, a little of philosophy, in its highest sense. His library consisted of theLife of Hannibal, theHistory of Wallace, Ray'sWisdom of God, Stackhouse'sHistory of the Bible; two or three plays of Shakespeare, Ferguson'sScottish Poems, Pope'sHomer, Shenstone, McKenzie'sMan of Feelingand Ossian.
Burns was a man of genius. He was like a spring—something that suggests no labor.
A spring seems to be a perpetual free gift of nature. There is no thought of toil. The water comes whispering to the pebbles without effort. There is no machinery, no pipes, no pumps, no engines, no water-works, nothing that suggests expense or trouble. So a natural poet is, when compared with the educated, with the polished, with the industrious.
Burns seems to have done everything without effort. His poems wrote themselves. He was overflowing with sympathies, with suggestions, with ideas, in every possible direction. There is no midnight oil. There is nothing of the student—no suggestion of their having been re-written or re-cast. There is in his heart a poetic April and May, and all the poetic seeds burst into sudden life. In a moment the seed is a plant, and the plant is in blossom, and the fruit is given to the world.
He looks at everything from a natural point of view; and he writes of the men and women with whom he was acquainted. He cares nothing for mythology, nothing for the legends of the Greeks and Romans. He draws but little from history. Everything that he uses is within his reach, and he knows it from centre to circumference. All his figures and comparisons are perfectly natural. He does not endeavor to make angels of fine ladies.
He takes the servant girls with whom he is acquainted, the dairy maids that he knows. He puts wings upon them and makes the very angels envious.
And yet this man, so natural, keeping his cheek so close to the breast of nature, strangely enough thought that Pope and Churchill and Shenstone and Thomson and Lyttelton and Beattie were great poets.
His first poem was addressed to Nellie Kilpatrick, daughter of the blacksmith. He was in love with Ellison Begbie, offered her his heart and was refused. She was a servant, working in a family and living on the banks of the Cessnock. Jean Armour, his wife, was the daughter of a tailor, and Highland Mary, a servant—a milk-maid.
He did not make women of goddesses, but he made goddesses of women.
POET OF LOVE.
Burns was the poet of love. To him woman was divine. In the light of her eyes he stood transfigured. Love changed this peasant to a king; the plaid became a robe of purple; the ploughman became a poet; the poor laborer an inspired lover.
In his "Vision" his native Muse tells the story of his verse:
"When youthful Love, warm-blushing strong,Keen-shivering shot thy nerves along,Those accents, grateful to thy tongue,Th' adored Name,I taught thee how to pour in song,To soothe thy flame."
Ah, this light from heaven: how it has purified the heart of man!
Was there ever a sweeter song than "Bonnie Doon"?
"Thou'lt break my heart thou bonnie birdThat sings beside thy mate,For sae I sat and sae I sang,And wist na o' my fate."
or,
"O, my luve's like a red, red roseThat's newly sprung in June;O, my luve's like the melodieThat's sweetly play'd in tune."
It would consume days to give the intense and tender lines—lines wet with the heart's blood, lines that throb and sigh and weep, lines that glow like flames, lines that seem to clasp and kiss.
But the most perfect love-poem that I know—pure the tear of gratitude—is "To Mary in Heaven:"
"Thou lingering star, with less'ning ray,That lov'st to greet the early morn,Again thou usher'st in the dayMy 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 groveWhere, by the winding Ayr, we met,To live one day of parting love?Eternity will not effaceThose 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, thick'ning green;The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar,Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene.The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,The birds sang love on ev'ry spray,Till too, too soon, the glowing westProclaim'd the speed of wingèd day."Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes,And fondly broods with miser care!Time but the impression stronger makes,As streams their channels deeper wear.My Mary, dear departed shade!Where is thy blissful place of rest?Seest thou thy lover lowly laid?Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?"
Above all the daughters of luxury and wealth, above all of Scotland's queens rises this pure and gentle girl made deathless by the love of Robert Burns.
POET OF HOME
He was the poet of the home—of father, mother, child—of the purest wedded love.
In the "Cotter's Saturday Night," one of the noblest and sweetest poems in the literature of the world, is a description of the poor cotter going from his labor to his home:
"At length his lonely cot appears in view,Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin', stacher throughTo meet their Dad, wi' flichterin' noise and glee.His wee bit ingle, bClinkin' bonnilie,His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile,The lisping infant prattling on his knee,Does a' his weary carking cares beguile,And makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil."
And in the same poem, after having described the courtship, Burns bursts into this perfect flower:
"O happy love! where love like this is found!O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!I've pacèd much this weary, mortal round,And sage experience bids me this declare:If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spareOne cordial in this melancholy vale,'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,In other's arms, breathe out the tender taleBeneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev'ning gale."
Is there in the world a more beautiful—a more touching picture than the old couple sitting by the ingleside with clasped hands, and the pure, patient, loving old wife saying to the white-haired man who won her heart when the world was young:
"John Anderson, my jo, John,When we were first acquent;Your locks were like the raven,Your bonnie brow was brent;But now your brow is beld, John,Your locks are like the snaw;But blessings on your frosty pow,John Anderson, my jo."John Anderson, my jo, John,We clamb the hill thegither;And monie a canty day, John,We've had wi' ane anither;Now we maun totter down, John,But hand in hand we'll go,And sleep thegither at the foot,John Anderson, my jo."
Burns taught that the love of wife and children was the highest—that to toil for them was the noblest.
"The sacred lowe o' weel placed love,Luxuriantly indulge it;But never tempt the illicit rove,Though naething should divulge it.""I waine the quantum of the sin,The hazzard o'concealing;But och! it hardens all within,And petrifies the feeling.""To make a happy fireside climeTo weans and wife,That's the true pathos, and sublime,Of human life."
FRIENDSHIP.
He was the poet of friendship:
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And never brought to min'?Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And days o' auld lang syne?"
Wherever those who speak the English language assemble—wherever the Anglo-Saxon people meet with clasp and smile—these words are given to the air.
SCOTCH DRINK.
The poet of good Scotch drink, of merry meetings, of the cup that cheers, author of the best drinking song in the world:
"O, Willie brew'd a peck o' maut,And Rob and Allen came to see;Three blyther hearts, that lee-lang night,Ye wadna find in Christendie.Chorus."We are na fou, we're no that fou,But just a drappie in our ee;The cock may craw, the day may daw,And aye we'll taste the barley bree.
"Here are we met, three merry boys,Three merry boys, I trow, are we;And monie a night we've merry been,And monie mae we hope to be!We are na fou, &c."It is the moon, I ken her horn,That's bClinkin in the lift say hie;She shines sae bright to wyle us hame,But by my sooth she'll wait a wee!We are na fou, &c."Wha first shall rise to gang awa,A cuckold, coward loun is he!Wha last beside his chair shall fa',He is the King amang us three!We are na fou, &c."
POETS BORN, NOT MADE.
He did not think the poet could be made—that colleges could furnish feeling, capacity, genius. He gave his opinion of these manufactured minstrels:
"A set o' dull, conceited hashes,Confuse their brains in college classes!They gang in stirks, and come out asses,Plain truth to speak;An' syne they think to climb ParnassusBy dint o' Greek!""Gie me ane spark o' Nature's fire,That's a' the learning I desire;Then tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mireAt pleugh or cart,My Muse, though hamely in attire,May touch the heart."
BURNS, THE ARTIST.
He was an artist—a painter of pictures.
This of the brook:
"Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,As thro' the glen it wimpl't;Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays;Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't;Whyles glitter's to the nightly rays,Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle;Whyles cookit underneath the braes,Below the spreading hazel,Unseen that night."
Or this from Tam O'Shanter:
"But pleasures are like poppies spread,You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed,Or, like the snow falls in the river,A moment white—then melts forever;Or, like the borealis race,That flit ere you can point their place;Or, like the rainbow's lovely form,Evanishing amid the storm."
This:
"As in the bosom of the streamThe moon-beam dwells at dewy e'en;So, trembling, pure, was tender love,Within the breast o' bonnie Jean.""The sun had clos'd the winter day,The Curlers quat their roarin play,An' hunger's Maukin ta'en her wayTo kail-yards green,While faithless snaws ilk step betrayWhare she had been.""O, sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods,When lintwhites chant amang the buds,And jinkin' hares, in amorous whids,Their loves enjoy,While thro' the braes the cushat croonsWi' wailfu' cry!""Ev'n winter bleak has charms to meWhen winds rave thro' the naked tree;Or frosts on hills of OchiltreeAre hoary gray;Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee,Dark'ning the day!"
This of the lark and daisy—the daintiest and nearest perfect in our language:
"Alas! it's no' thy neebor sweet,The bonnie Lark, companion meet!Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet!Wi' spreckl'd breast,When upward-springing, blythe, to greetThe purpling east."
A REAL DEMOCRAT.
He was in every fibre of his being a sincere democrat. He was a believer in the people—in the sacred rights of man. He believed that honest peasants were superior to titled parasites. He knew the so-called "gentrv" of his time.
In one of his letters to Dr. Moore is this passage: "It takes a few dashes into the world to give the young great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils—the mechanics and peasantry around him—who were born in the same village."
He knew the infinitely cruel spirit of caste—a spirit that despises the useful—the children of toil—those who bear the burdens of the world.
"If I'm design'd yon lordling's slave,By nature's law design'd,Why was an independent wishE'er planted in my mind?If not, why am I subject to .His cruelty, or scorn?Or why has man the will and pow'rTo make his fellow mourn?"
Against the political injustice of his time—against the artificial distinctions among men by which the lowest were regarded as the highest—he protested in the great poem, "A man's a man for a' that," every line of which came like lava from his heart.
"Is there, for honest poverty,That hangs his head, and a' that?The coward-slave, we pass him by,We dare be poor for a' that!For a' that, and a' that,Our toils obscure, and a' that;The rank is but the guinea stamp;The man's the gowd for a' that.""What tho' on hamely fare we dine,Wear hodden-gray, and a' that;Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,A man's a man for a' that.For a' that, and a' that,Their tinsel show, and a' that;The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,Is king o' men for a' that.""Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;Tho' hundreds worship at his word,He's but a coof for a' that;For a' that, and a' that,His riband, star, and a' that,The man' o' independent mind,He looks and laughs at a' that.""A prince can mak' a belted knight,A marquis, duke, and a' that;But an honest man's aboon his might,Guid faith he mauna fa' that!For a' that, and a' that,Their dignities, and a' that,The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,Are higher ranks than a' that."Then let us pray that come it may,As come it will for a' that;That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,May bear the gree and a' that.For a' that, and a' that;It's cornin' yet for a' thatThat man to man, the warld o'er,Shall brithers be for a' that."
No grander declaration of independence was ever uttered. It stirs the blood like a declaration of war. It is the apotheosis of honesty, independence, sense and worth. And it is a prophecy of that better day when men will be brothers the world over.
HIS THEOLOGY.
Burns was superior in heart and brain to the theologians of his time. He knew that the creed of Calvin was infinitely cruel and absurd, and he attacked it with every weapon that his brain could forge.
He was not awed by the clergy, and he cared nothing for what was called "authority." He insisted on thinking for himself. Sometimes he faltered, and now and then, fearing that some friend might take offence, he would say or write a word in favor of the Bible, and sometimes he praised the Scriptures in words of scorn.
He laughed at the dogma of eternal pain—at hell as described by the preacher:
"A vast, unbottom'd, boundless pit,Fill'd fou o' lowin' brunstane,Wha's ragin' flame an' scorchin' heatWad melt the hardest whun-stane!The half asleep start up wi' fear,An' think they hear it roarin',When presently it does appear,'Twas but some neebor snorin'.Asleep that day."
The dear old doctrine that man is totally depraved, that morality is a snare—a flowery path leading to perdition—excited the indignation of Burns. He put the doctrine in verse:
"Morality, thou deadly bane,Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain!Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust isIn moral mercy, truth and justice."He understood the hypocrites of his day:"Hypocrisy, in mercy spare it!That holy robe, O dinna tear it!Spare't for their sakes wha aften wear it,The lads in black;But your curst wit, when it comes near it,Rives't aff their back.""Then orthodoxy yet may prance,And Learning in a woody dance,And that fell cur ca'd Common Sense,That bites sae sair,Be banish'd owre the seas to France;Let him bark there.""They talk religion in their mouth;They talk o' mercy, grace, an' truth,For what? to gie their malice skouth On some puir wight,An' hunt him down, o'er right an' ruth,To ruin straight.""Doctor Mac, Doctor Mac,Ye should stretch on a rack,To strike evil doers wi' terror;To join faith and sense Upon any pretence,Was heretic damnable error,Doctor Mac,Was heretic damnable error."
But the greatest, the sharpest, the deadliest, the keenest, the wittiest thing ever said or written against Calvinism is Holy Willie's Prayer:—