The Real Robert Burns Part 10

In 'A Winter Night,' the great poem of universal sympathy, he says:

Affliction's sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss.

He closes the poem with four great lines:

But deep this truth impressed my mind-- Thro' all His works abroad, The heart benevolent and kind The most resembles G.o.d.

In the same poem he paints the characters who lack loving sympathy, and whose lives and att.i.tudes towards their fellow-men separate men, and break the ties that should unite all men, and thus prevent the development of the spirit of brotherhood. After describing the fierceness of the storm and expressing his heartfelt sympathy for the cattle, the sheep, the birds, and even with destructive animals such as prey on hen-roosts or defenceless lambs, his mind was filled with a plaintive strain, as he thought of the bitterness of man to his brother man, and he proceeds:

Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!

And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost!

Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!

Not all your rage, as now united, shows More hard unkindness, unrelenting, Vengeful malice unrepenting, Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows.

The depth and universality of his sympathy is shown in 'To a Mouse,' after he had destroyed its nest while ploughing:

I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal!

In his 'Epistle to Davie,' a brother poet, he emphasises the value of true sympathy, that should bind all hearts, must yet bind all hearts in universal brotherhood, when he says:

All hail! ye tender feelings dear!

The smile of love, the friendly tear, The sympathetic glow!

Long since, this world's th.o.r.n.y ways Had numbered out my weary days, Had it not been for you.

In his 'Epistle to Robert Graham of Fintry,' after describing the thrifty but selfishly prudent, 'who feel by reason and who give by rule,' and expressing regret that 'the friendly e'er should want a friend,' he writes:

But come ye, who the G.o.dlike pleasure know, Heaven's attribute distinguished--to bestow!

Whose arms of love would grasp the human race.

In the opinion of Burns, they are the ideal men and women who best understood, and most perfectly practised, the teaching of Christ.

In one of his epistles to his friend Lapraik he says:

For thus the royal mandate ran, When first the human race began: The social, friendly, honest man, Whate'er he be-- 'Tis _he_ fulfils great Nature's plan, And none but he.

The influence of any act on society, on the brotherhood of man as a whole, was the supreme test of Burns to distinguish between goodness and evil.

To Dr Moore, of London, he said: 'Whatsoever is not detrimental to society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of G.o.d, the giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His creatures with thankful delight.'

To Clarinda he wrote: 'Thou Almighty Author of peace, and goodness, and love! Do thou give me the social heart that kindly tastes of every man's cup! Is it a draught of joy? Warm and open my heart to share it with cordial, unenvying rejoicing! Is it the bitter potion of sorrow? Melt my heart with sincerely sympathetic woe! Above all, do Thou give me the manly mind, that resolutely exemplifies in life and manners those sentiments which I would wish to be thought to possess.'

In 'On the Seas and Far Away' he says:

Peace, thy olive wand extend, And bid wild war his ravage end; Man with brother man to meet, And as a brother kindly greet.

In the 'Tree of Liberty' he says, if we had plenty of the trees of Liberty growing throughout the whole world:

Like brothers in a common cause We'd on each other smile, man; And equal rights and equal laws Wad gladden ev'ry isle, man.

To Clarinda, when he presented a pair of wine-gla.s.ses--a perfectly proper gift to a lady in the opinion of his time--he gave her at the same time a poem, in which he said:

And fill them high with generous juice, As generous as your mind; And pledge them to the generous toast, 'The whole of human kind!'

In his 'Epistle to John Lapraik,' after describing those whose lives do not help men towards brotherhood, he describes those who are true to the great ideal:

But ye whom social pleasure charms, Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms, Who hold your being on the terms, 'Each aid the others,'

Come to my bowl, come to my arms, My friends, my brothers.

Burns gives each man the true test of the influence of his life for the promotion of true brotherhood in the short line, 'Each aid the others.'

That line is the supreme test of duty, and is the highest interpretation of Christ's commandment to His disciples, and through them to all men, 'Love one another, as I have loved you.' Vital love means vital helpfulness.

d.i.c.kens gives the same great message as Burns when, in describing Little Dorritt, he says: 'She was something different from the rest, and she was that something for the rest.' This is probably the shortest sentence ever written that conveys so clearly the two great revelations of Christ: Individuality and Brotherhood.

There are some who dislike the expression 'Come to my bowl.' They should test Burns by the accepted standards of his time, not by the standards of our time. The bowl was the symbol of true comrades.h.i.+p in castle and cot, in the manse and in the layman's home, in the time of Burns.

No other writer has interpreted Christ's revelations of Democracy and Brotherhood so clearly and so fully as Robert Burns. He sums up the whole matter of man's relations.h.i.+p to man in 'A Man's a Man for a' That,' in the last verse:

Then let us pray that come it may-- As come it will for a' that-- That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. pre-eminence For a' that, an' a' that, It's coming yet, for a' that, That man to man the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that.

He revealed his supreme purpose in 'A Revolutionary Lyric':

In virtue trained, enlightened youth Will love each fellow-creature; And future years shall prove the truth-- That man is good by nature.

The golden age will then revive; Each man will love his brother; In harmony we all shall live, And share the earth together.

While the so-called religious teachers of the time of Burns were dividing men into creeds based on petty theological distinctions, Burns was interpreting for humanity the highest teachings of Christ: Democracy based on recognition of the value of the individual soul, and Brotherhood as the natural fruit of true democracy.

CHAPTER VII.

BURNS A REVEALER OF PURE LOVE.

Many people yet believe that Burns was a universal and inconstant lover.

He really did not love many women. He loved deeply, but he had not a great many really serious experiences of love. He loved Nellie Kirkpatrick when he was fifteen, and Peggy Thomson when he was seventeen. He says his love of Nellie made him a poet. There is no other experience that will kindle the strongest element in a human soul during the adolescent period so fully, and so permanently, as genuine love. Love will not make all young people poets, but it will kindle with its most developing glow whatever is the strongest natural power in each individual soul. Parents should foster such love in young people during the adolescent period, instead of ridiculing it, as is too often done. G.o.d may not mean that the love is to be permanent, but there is no other agency that can be so productive at the time of adolescence as love that is reverenced by parents who, by due reverence, sympathy, and comrades.h.i.+p, help love to do its best work.

These two adolescent loves did their work in developing Burns, but they were not loves of maturity. From seventeen till he was twenty-one he was not really in love. Then he met, and deeply and reverently loved, Alison Begbie. She was a servant girl of charm, sweetness, and dignity, in a home not far from Lochlea farm. He wrote three poems to her: 'The La.s.s o'

Cessnock Banks,' 'Peggy Alison,' and 'Mary Morrison.' He reversed her name for the second t.i.tle, because it possessed neither the elements of metre nor of rhyme. He gave his third poem to her the t.i.tle 'Mary Morrison' to make it conform to the same metre as 'Peggy Alison.' There was a Mary Morrison who was nine years of age when Burns wrote 'Mary Morrison.' She is buried in Mauchline Churchyard, and on her tombstone it is stated that she was 'the Mary Morrison of Burns.' His brother Gilbert knew better. He said the poem was written to the lady to whom 'Peggy Alison' was written.

It is impossible to believe that Burns would write 'Mary Morrison' to a child only nine years old.

Burns wrote five love-letters to Alison Begbie. Beautiful and reverent letters they were, too. In the fourth, he asked her to become his wife. In Chapter III. it has been explained that he was too shy, even at twenty-two, to ask the woman whom he loved to marry him when he was with her. This does not indicate that he had a new love each week, as many yet believe. Miss Begbie refused to marry him, and his reply should win him the respect of every reasonable man or woman who reads it. It is the dignified and reverent outpouring of a loving heart, held in control by a well-balanced and considerate mind.

Although Burns had no lover from seventeen to twenty-one years of age, he wrote love-songs during those years, but even his mother could not tell the name of any young woman who kindled his muse during these four years.

Neither could the other members of his family.

He wrote one poem, 'My Nannie O,' during this period. He first wrote for the first line: