English Literature for Boys and Girls Part 67

*A very little wrong.

"Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us: He knows each chord, its various tone, Each spring its various bias: Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted."

Bad fortune, too, followed Burns. The shop in which he was engaged was set on fire, and he was left "like a true poet, not worth a sixpence."

So leaving the troubles and temptations of Irvine behind, he carried home a smirched name to his father's house.

Here, too, troubles were gathering. Bad harvests were followed by money difficulties, and, weighed down with all his cares, William Burns died. The brothers had already taken another farm named Mossgiel. Soon after the father's death the whole family went to live there.

Robert meant to settle down and be a regular farmer. "Come, go to, I will be wise," he said. He read farming books and bought a little diary in which he meant to write down farming notes. But the farming notes often turned out to be sc.r.a.ps of poetry.

The next four years of Burns's life were eventful years, for though he worked hard as he guided the plow or swung the scythe, he wove songs in his head. And as he followed his trade year in year out, from summer to winter, from winter to summer, he learned all the secrets of the earth and sky, of the hedgerow and the field.

How everything that was beautiful and tender and helpless in nature appealed to him we know from his poems. There is the field mouse--the "wee sleekit,* cow'rin', tim'rous beastie,"

whose nest he turned up and destroyed in his November plowing.

"Poor little mouse, I would not hurt you," he says--

*Smooth.

"Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin; Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!"

And thou poor mousie art turned out into the cold, bleak, winter weather!--

"But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In providing foresight may be vain; Gang aft agley,*

An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain For promised joy."

*Go often wrong.

It goes to his heart to destroy the early daisies with the plow--

"Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem.

To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Thou bonnie gem.

"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 greet The purpling east.

"Cauld blew the bitter-biting North Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce rear'd above the parent earth Thy tender form.

"The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield, High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun s.h.i.+eld; But thou, beneath the random bield*

O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field,**

Unseen, alane.

"There, in thy scanty mantle cauld, Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts thy una.s.suming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies!"

*Shelter.

**Bare stubble field.

Burns wrote love songs too, for he was constantly in love--often to his discredit, and at length he married Jean Armour, Scots fas.h.i.+on, by writing a paper saying that they were man and wife and giving it to her. This was enough in those days to make a marriage. But Burns had no money; the brothers' farm had not prospered, and Jean's father, a stern old Scotsman, would have nothing to say to Robert, who was in his opinion a bad man, and a wild, unstable, penniless rimester. He made his daughter burn her "lines," thus in his idea putting an end to the marriage.

Robert at this was both hurt and angry, and made up his mind to leave Scotland for ever and never see his wife and children more.

He got a post as overseer on an estate in Jamaica, but money to pay for his pa.s.sage he had none. In order to get money some friends proposed that he should publish his poems. This he did, and the book was such a success that instead of going to Jamaica as an unknown exile Burns went to Edinburgh to be entertained, feted, and flattered by the greatest men of the day.

All the fine ladies and gentlemen were eager to see the plowman poet. The fuss they made over him was enough to turn the head of a lesser man. But in spite of all the flattery, Burns, though pleased and glad, remained as simple as before. He moved among the grand people in their silks and velvets clad in homespun clothes "like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird"* as easily as he had moved among his humble friends. He held himself with that proud independence which later made him write--

*Scott.

"Is there for honest poverty That hangs his head, and a' that?

The coward slave, we pa.s.s him by, We dare to 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 though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hodden grey, 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, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that."

After spending a brilliant winter in Edinburgh, Burns set off on several tours through his native land, visiting many of the places famous in Scottish history. But, as the months went on, he began to be restless in his seeming idleness. The smiles of the great world would not keep hunger from the door; he feared that his fame might be only a nine days' wonder, so he decided to return to his farming. He took a farm a few miles from Dumfries, and although since he had been parted from his Jean he had forgotten her time and again and made love to many another, he and she were now married, this time in good truth. From now onward it was that Burns wrote some of his most beautiful songs, and it is for his songs that we remember him. Some of them are his own entirely, and some are founded upon old songs that had been handed on for generations by the people from father to son, but had never been written down until Burns heard them and saved them from being forgotten. But in every case he left the song a far more beautiful thing than he found it. None of them perhaps is more beautiful than that he now wrote to his Jean--

"Of a' the airts* the wind can blaw, I dearly like the wet, For there the bonnie la.s.sie lives, The la.s.sie I lo'e best: The wild-woods grow and rivers row,**

And mony a hill between; But 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, There's not a bonnie bird that sings But minds me o' my Jean."

*Directions.

**Roll.

***Wood.

But farming and song-making did not seem to go together, and on his new farm Burns succeeded little better than on any that he had tried before. He thought to add to his livelihood by turning an excise man, that is, an officer whose work is to put down smuggling, to collect the duty on whisky, and to see that none upon which duty has not been paid is sold. One of his fine Edinburgh friends got an appointment for him, and he began his duties, and it would seem fulfilled them well. But this mode of life was for Burns a failure. In discharge of his duties he had to ride hundreds of miles in all kinds of weathers. He became worn out by the fatigue of it, and it brought him into the temptation of drinking too much. Things went with him from bad to worse, and at length he died at the age of thirty-six, worn out by toil and sin and suffering.

In many ways his was a misspent life "at once unfinished and a ruin."* His was the poet's soul bound in the body of clay. He was an unhappy man, and we cannot but pity him, and yet remember him with grat.i.tude for the beautiful songs he gave us. In his own words we may say--

*Carlyle.

"Is there a man, whose judgment clear, Can others teach the course to steer, Yet runs, himself, life's mad career, Wild as the wave?

Here pause--and, through the starting tear, Survey this grave."

Burns was a true son of the soil. There is no art in his songs but only nature. Apart form his melody what strikes us most is his truth; he sang of what he saw, of what he felt and knew. He knew the Scottish peasant through and through. Grave and humorous, simple and cunning, honest and hypocritical, proud and independent--every phase of him is to be found in Burns's poems.

He knew love too; and in every phase--happy and unhappy, worthy and unworthy--he sings of it. But it is of love in truth that he sings. Here we have no more the make-believe of the Elizabethan age, no longer the stilted measure of the Georgian. The day of the heroic couplet is done; with Burns we come back to nature.

BOOK TO READ

Selected Works of Robert Burns, edited by R. Sutherland. (This is probably the best selection for juvenile readers.)

Chapter LXXIII COWPER--"THE TASK"

WHILE Burns was weaving his wonderful songs among the Lowland hills of Scotland, another lover of nature was telling of placid English life, of simple everyday doings, in a quiet little country town in England. This man was William Cowper.