That I for poor auld Scotland's sake Some useful plan or book could make Or sing a sang at least.
Whatever would have happened, if Robert Burns, disappointed in his first attempt to marry, had really taken the voyage to the West Indies, to act as a book-keeper to a slave estate in Jamaica, the world will never know, for fortunately the publication of his first volume at Kilmarnock in 1786, changed what then appeared to be the course of his life, and proved to him, that while he was not to make a useful plan or book for Scotland's sake, he was at least to sing her songs. That two years later he did in fact marry the girl, whose earlier inclination was to "sigh as a lover" but nevertheless as a daughter to obey her father who objected to the match, is entirely beside the point. His first publication earned him immediate recognition and £20, but it had also put him on the path to success. His next effort was more profitable, for his second edition of poems brought him in £400, enabled him to take a new farm, where he settled, married, lost his money and wrote amongst other things "Auld Long Syne," and "Tam o' Shanter." Service in the Excise kept body and soul together, but his dissipations, for Burns if he worked hard, played hard as well, prematurely aged him, and in April, 1796, he wrote.
"I fear it will be some time Be e I tune my lyre again. By Babel's streams I have sat and wept. I have.only known existence by the pressure of sickness and counted time by the repercussions of pain. I close my eyes in misery and open them without hope.
I look on the vernal day and say with poor Fergusson:—
Say wherefore has an all-indulgent heaven Life to the comfortless and wretched given?"
Within two months he was dead and that Lowland Scotland which as a distinct nationality came in with two warriors, William Wallace and Robert Bruce, commenced to go out with Robert Burns, and finally Walter Scott.
John Nichol claims that since Sappho loved and sung there has been no national lyrist such as Burns. He fed on the past history of his country as Chaucer on. the older fields of English thought, and Still the elements o' sang, In formless jumble, right and wrang, Went floating in his brain.
But again, as Nichol rightly remarks, he gave more than he received, summing up the stray material of the past and refining it with his own inestimable alchemy, adding so much of his own that the most conspicuous feature of his genius was the variety of new paths he explored. To commence with he had thrown off the slavery of earlier forms, Simple Ann, Jane or Mary had taken the place of Chloe, Lesbia and Sylvia; all the Greek and Roman Pantheon which had inspired carlier poets went into the discard while Burns dealt with the immediate humanities, The simplicity of the man rings throughout the whole of his verse, and while at times it seems as though his eyes are continually bent upon the earth, there is every evidence that he also looked above. Much has been said of Burns' ten-dorness of heart, a trodden on daisy inspires him as a highly cultivated flower never could, a timid mouse means more to him than the awe-inspiring lion, a poor man more than a rich See yonder poor o'erlaboured wight So abject, mean and vile Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil Driven by his passions into ways he knew were wrong, his sensitive soul was always appreciative of the good. With all his faults, and they were many, Burns was sincere, hating hypocrisy and loving true religion. To some extent all that may seem contrary but the heart of a poet is apt to be. How else could he be what he is? His very inconsistencies might often have been sources of inspiration, no matter how much he might regret them as he apparently did "I have been this morning" he writes to a friend, "taking a peep through, as Young finely says the dark postern of time long elapsed, and you will easily guess twas a rueful prospect. What tissue of thoughtlessness, weakness, folly! My life reminded me of a ruined temple: what strength, what proportiens in some parts! What unsightly gu what prostrate ruins in others!
He was probably less sinful than he believed himself.to be, for the repentant sinner is apt to magnify his faults because of his very aversion from them. Yet if he had to be a human being he had to sin to learn by experience much about which he was to write. Hence the vast range between the first of his war songs, composed in a storm on a moor, and the pathos of "Mary in Heaven" And in that rich gamut there is, as another enthusiast writes, "the vehemence of battle, the wail of woe, the march of veterans red-wat-shod' the smiles of meeting, the tears of parting friends, the gurgle of brown burns, the roar of the wind through the pines, the rustle of barley rigs, the thunder on the hill—all Scotland is in his verse." Can there be a truer estimate of the man's work? It is difficult to believe so, for Burns was the inspired voice of Scotland. And so today, the one-hundred-and-eightieth anniversary of his birth, wherever a few Scots
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.