The Real Robert Burns Part 12

fragrant woods' and 'The h.o.a.ry cliffs crowned wi' flowers;' and 'The streamlet pouring over a waterfall.' Love and Nature were united in his heart.

In 'Blythe was She' he describes the lady by saying she was like beautiful things:

Her looks were like a flower in May.

Her smile was like a simmer morn;

Her bonnie face it was as meek As any lamb upon a lea;

and the 'ev'ning sun.'

Her step was

As light's a bird upon a thorn.

He wrote 'O' a' the Airts the Wind can Blaw' about Jean Armour after they were married, while he was building their home on Ellisland. He says in this exquisite song:

By day and night my fancy's flight Is ever wi' my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers, I see her sweet and fair; I hear her in the tunefu' birds, I hear her charm the air: There's not a bonnie flower that springs By fountain, shaw, or green; woodland There's not a bonnie bird that sings, But minds me o' my Jean.

To Jean he wrote again:

It is na, Jean, thy bonnie face, Nor shape that I admire; Although thy beauty and thy grace Might weel awake desire.

Something in ilka part o' thee To praise, to love, I find; But dear as is thy form to me, Still dearer is thy mind.

In 'Delia--an Ode,' he uses the 'fair face of orient day,' and 'the tints of the opening rose' to suggest her beauty, and 'the lark's wild warbled lay' and the 'sweet sound of the tinkling rill' to suggest the sweetness of her voice.

In 'I Gaed a Waefu' Gate Yestreen' he says:

She talked, she smiled, my heart she wiled; She charmed my _soul_, I wist na how.

It was the soul of Burns that responded to love. Neither Alison Begbie nor Mary Campbell excelled in beauty, and no one acquainted with their high character could have had the temerity to suggest that love for them was 'the love of the flesh.' His beautiful poems to Jean Armour place his love for her on a high plane. He was a man of strong pa.s.sion, but pa.s.sion was not the source of his love.

In 'Aye sae Bonnie, Blythe and Gay' he says:

She's aye sae neat, sae trim, sae light, the graces round her hover, Ae look deprived me o' my heart, and I became her lover

'Ilka bird sang o' its love' he makes Miss Kennedy say in 'The Banks o'

Doon.' As the birds ever sang love to Burns, he naturally makes them sing love to all hearts.

In 'The Bonnie Wee Thing' he gives high qualifications for love kindling:

Wit, and grace, and love, and beauty In ae constellation s.h.i.+ne; To adore thee is my duty, G.o.ddess o' this soul o' mine.

In 'The Charms of Lovely Davies' he says:

Each eye it cheers when she appears, Like Phoebus in the morning, When past the shower, and ev'ry flower The garden is adorning.

The last three poems from which quotations have been made were written about two ladies whose lovers had been untrue to them: the first about Miss Kennedy, a member of one of the leading Ayrs.h.i.+re families; the other two about Miss Davies, a relative of the Glenriddell family.

In a letter to Miss Davies he said:

'Woman is the blood-royal of life; let there be slight degrees of precedency among them, but let them all be sacred. Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original component feature of my mind.'

Burns was not in love with either Miss Kennedy or Miss Davies, but he explains the writing of the songs to Miss Davies, in a letter enclosing 'Bonnie Wee Thing,' by saying, 'When I meet a person of my own heart I positively can no more desist from rhyming on impulse than an aeolian harp can refuse its tones to the streaming air.'

One of his most beautiful poems is 'The Posie,' which he planned to pull for his 'Ain dear May.'

The primrose I will pu', the firstling o' the year, And I will pu' the pink, the emblem o' my dear, For she's the pink o' womankind, and blooms without a peer.

I'll pu' the budding rose, when Phoebus peeps in view, For it's like a baumy kiss o' her sweet, bonnie mou'; The hyacinth's for constancy, wi' its unchanging blue.

The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair, And in her lovely bosom I'll place the lily there; The daisy's for simplicity and unaffected air.

The woodbine I will pu', when the e'ening star is near, And the diamond draps o' dew shall be her een sae clear; The violet's for modesty, which weel she fa's to wear.

I'll tie the posie round wi' the silken band o' luve, And I'll place it in her breast, and I'll swear by a' above That to my latest draught o' life the band shall ne'er remove, And this will be a posie to my ain dear May.

In 'Lovely Polly Stewart' he says:

O lovely Polly Stewart, O charming Polly Stewart, There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May That's half so fair as thou art.

The flower it blaws, it fades, it fa's, And art can ne'er renew it; But worth and truth, eternal youth Will gie to Polly Stewart.

In 'Thou Fair Eliza' he says:

Not the bee upon the blossom, In the pride o' sinny noon; Not the little sporting fairy, All beneath the simmer moon; Not the minstrel, in the moment Fancy lightens in his e'e, Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture, That thy presence gies to me.

In 'My Bonie Bell' he writes:

The smiling spring comes in rejoicing, The surly winter grimly flies; Now crystal clear are the falling waters, And bonie blue are the sunny skies.

Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning, The evening gilds the ocean's swell; All creatures joy in the sun's returning, And I rejoice in my Bonie Bell.

'Sweet Afton' was suggested by the following: 'I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not, nor awaken my love--my dove, my undefiled! The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.'

In descriptive power and in fond and reverent love no poem of Burns, or any other writer, surpa.s.ses Sweet Afton. Authorities have been divided in regard to the person who was the Mary of Sweet Afton. Currie and Lockhart declined to accept the statement of Gilbert Burns that it was Highland Mary. Chambers and Douglas, the most illuminating and reliable of the early biographers of Burns, agree with Gilbert. One of Mrs Dunlop's daughters stated that she heard Burns himself say that Mary Campbell was the woman whose name he used to represent the lover for whom he asked such reverent consideration. He had no lover at any period of his life on the Afton. He had but one lover named Mary, and she stirred him to a degree of reverence that toned the music of his love to the end of his life. Mary Campbell was alive to Burns in a truly realistic sense when he wrote the sacred poem 'Sweet Afton.'

In 'O were my Love yon Lilac Fair' he a.s.sumes that his love might be

A lilac fair, Wi' purpling blossoms in the spring, And I a bird to shelter there, When wearied on my little wing.

In the second verse he says:

O gin my love were yon red rose if That grows upon the castle wa'; And I mysel' a drop o' dew, Into her bonie breast to fa'!

Could imagination kindle more pure ideals to reveal love than these? In 'Bonie Jean--A Ballad' he gives two delightful pictures of love:

As in the bosom of the stream The moonbeam dwells at dewy e'en; So trembling, pure, was tender love Within the breast of Bonie Jean.