by Robert Burns
Had number’d out my weary days,
Had it not been for you!
Fate still has blest me with a friend
In every care and ill;
135 And oft a more endearing band,
A tye more tender still. tie
It lightens, it brightens
The tenebrific scene, darkening/depressive
To meet with, and greet with
140 My DAVIE or my JEAN!
O, how that Name inspires my style!
The words come skelpin’ rank an’ file, rattling/running
Amaist before I ken! almost, know
The ready measure rins as fine, runs
145 As Phoebus and the famous Nine
Were glowran owre my pen. looking over
My spavet Pegasus will limp, lame, leg joint problems
Till ance he’s fairly het; once, hot
And then he’ll hilch, an’ stilt, an’ jimp, hobble, limp, jump
150 And rin an unco fit; run, rapid pace
But least then, the beast then
Should rue this hasty ride,
I’ll light now, and dight now wipe clean
His sweaty, wizen’d hide. withered
David Sillar (1760–1830) was one of several recipients of Burns’s Ayrshire epistolary poetry whom the Bard certainly overestimated poetically if not personally. Sillar had a mixed career as failed teacher then grocer but eventually inherited the family farm, Spittleside, Tarbolton and died a rich Irvine magistrate. This is the very reverse of the life of shared deprivation outlined for him and Burns himself in this poem. A good fiddler and composer (he composed the music to Burns’s The Rosebud), he published his less than mediocre Poems at Kilmarnock in 1789. His proximity to Burns can be gauged by ll. 114– 17 where, as in Sterne, rugged, biological reality constantly pene-trates the surface of fine feeling. The poem is a technically formidable example of Burns’s employment of Alexander Montgomerie’s The Cherry and the Slae measure which James VI defined as one example of ‘cuttit and broken verse, quhairof new formes daylie inuentit’ (Poems, STS, l. 82). Burns is, however, hardly ever given to technique for its own sake. As Daiches has remarked (p. 163), the poem is remarkable for its ability to mould the process of thought to such complex form. However, the nature of this thought itself is more questionable. The exposed multiple, tangible distresses of penury are expressed with extraordinary power throughout the poem as is the sense of chronic injustice between rich and poor. The compensations of poverty are less credible. Edwin Muir was particularly unhappy with ‘The heart ay’s the part ay, /That makes us right or wrang.’ Nor do the notions of compensatory and sexual harmony ring wholly true. Daiches in discussing stanza three, with its extraordinary initial delineation of the life of the beggars, defends the poem against such a sense of disparity between the desperate life it presents and the possible compensation for such a life thus:
Here the poet is not posturing for the benefit of the Edinburgh gentry, but letting the poem work itself easily into a lively expression of careless, cheerful view of life. The theme is a mood rather than a philosophy, a mood of defiance of the rich and happy acceptance of easygoing poverty. To seek for profundity of ethical thought here would be to miss the point of the poem, which seeks to capture a transitory state of mind rather than to state general principles (p. 163).
Arguably, rather than refuting it, this repeats the poem’s own inadequacy. Daiches, however, also considers that, after stanza seven, the poem falters badly. ‘Tenebrific’ (l. 138) is the poet’s neologism and not, certainly, the happiest of touches. The irresistible, Pegasian flood of language in the last stanza is a quite remarkable self-analysis of Burns in the grip of creativity.
1 Ramsay, R.B.
The Lament
Occasioned by the Unfortunate Issue of a Friend’s Amour
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Alas! how oft does Goodness wound itself,
And sweet Affection prove the spring of Woe!
HOME.
O thou pale Orb, that silent shines
While care-untroubled mortals sleep!
Thou seest a wretch who inly pines,
And wanders here to wail and weep!
5 With Woe I nightly vigils keep,
Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam;
And mourn, in lamentation deep,
How life and love are all a dream!
I joyless view thy rays adorn
10 The faintly-marked, distant hill;
I joyless view thy trembling horn
Reflected in the gurgling rill.
My fondly-fluttering heart, be still!
Thou busy pow’r, Remembrance, cease!
15 Ah! must the agonizing thrill
For ever bar returning Peace?
No idly-feign’d, poetic pains
My sad, lovelorn lamentings claim:
No shepherd’s pipe — Arcadian strains;
20 No fabled tortures quaint and tame.
The plighted faith, the mutual flame,
The oft-attested Pow’rs above,
The promis’d Father’s tender name,
These were the pledges of my love!
25 Encircled in her clasping arms,
How have the raptur’d moments flown!
How have I wished for Fortune’s charms,
For her dear sake, and her’s alone!
And, must I think it! is she gone,
30 My secret heart’s exulting boast?
And does she heedless hear my groan?
And is she ever, ever lost?
Oh! can she bear so base a heart,
So lost to Honour, lost to Truth,
35 As from the fondest lover part,
The plighted husband of her youth?
Alas! Life’s path may be unsmooth!
Her way may lie thro’ rough distress!
Then, who her pangs and pains will soothe,
40 Her sorrows share, and make them less?
Ye winged Hours that o’er us past,
Enraptur’d more the more enjoy’d,
Your dear remembrance in my breast
My fondly treasur’d thoughts employ’d.
45 That breast, how dreary now, and void,
For her too scanty once of room!
Ev’n ev’ry ray of Hope destroy’d,
And not a Wish to gild the gloom!
The morn, that warns th’ approaching day,
50 Awakes me up to toil and woe;
I see the hours in long array,
That I must suffer, lingering slow:
Full many a pang, and many a throe,
Keen Recollection’s direful train,
55 Must wring my soul, ere Phoebus, low,
Shall kiss the distant western main.
And when my nightly couch I try,
Sore-harass’d out, with care and grief,
My toil-beat nerves and tear-worn eye
60 Keep watchings with the nightly thief:
Or, if I slumber, Fancy, chief,
Reigns, haggard-wild, in sore affright:
Ev’n day, all-bitter, brings relief
From such a horror-breathing night.
65 O! thou bright Queen, who, o’er th’ expanse
Now highest reign’st, with boundless sway!
Oft has thy silent-marking glance
Observ’d us, fondly-wand’ring, stray!
The time, unheeded, sped away,
70 While Love’s luxurious pulse beat high,
Beneath thy silver-gleaming ray,
To mark the mutual-kindling eye.
Oh! scenes in strong remembrance set!
Scenes, never, never to return!
75 Scenes if in stupor I forget,
Again I feel, again I burn!
From ev’ry joy and pleasure torn,
Life’s weary vale I wander thro’;
And hopeless, comfortless, I’ll mourn
80 A faithless woman’s broken vow!
Written in the rhyming
format of Ramsay’s Ever-Green, this expresses the poet’s deep anguish at the forced break-up of his relationship with Jean Armour. He informed Dr Moore, after causing a stir among the Ayrshire clergy by circulating a copy of Holy Willie’s Prayer, that:
Unluckily for me, my idle wanderings led me, on another side, point-blank within the reach of their heaviest metal. – This is the unfortunate story alluded to in my printed poem, The Lament.’ Twas a shocking affair, which I cannot bear yet to recollect; and had very nearly given [me] one or two of the principal qualifications for a place among those who have lost the chart and mistake the reckoning of Rationality. – I gave up my part of the farm to my brother … (Letter 125)
Burns told Mrs Dunlop of his vexation at Jean being taken away by her family and their ‘detestation of my guilt of being a poor devil, not only forbade me her company & their house, but on my rumoured West Indian voyage, got a warrant to incarcerate me in jail till I should find security in my about-to-be Paternal relation’ (Letter 254). The closing line would suggest that Burns blamed Jean Armour as ‘faithless’ to him, although she was as much the victim of her parents’ extreme action as Burns.
Kinsley notes two minor influences from Blair’s poem The Grave and Goldsmith’s popular The Deserted Village (Vol. III, no. 93, p. 1174). The poem could easily be mistaken for an early work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, given lines such as ‘… I nightly vigils keep,/ Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam; /And mourn, in lamentation deep, /How life and love are all a dream!’ It is an arguably underrated English poem.
Despondency: An Ode
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Oppress’d with grief, oppress’d with care,
A burden more than I can bear,
I set me down and sigh;
O Life! Thou art a galling load,
5 Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I!
Dim-backward, as I cast my view,
What sick’ning Scenes appear!
What Sorrows yet may pierce me thro’,
10 Too justly I may fear!
Still caring, despairing,
Must be my bitter doom;
My woes here shall close ne’er
But with the closing tomb!
15 Happy ye sons of Busy-life,
Who, equal to the bustling strife,
No other view regard!
Ev’n when the wishèd end’s denied,
Yet while the busy means are plied,
20 They bring their own reward:
Whilst I, a hope-abandoned wight,
Unfitted with an aim,
Meet ev’ry sad returning night
And joyless morn the same.
25 You, bustling and justling,
Forget each grief and pain;
I, listless yet restless,
Find ev’ry prospect vain.
How blest the Solitary’s lot,
30 Who, all-forgetting, all-forgot,
Within his humble cell —
The cavern, wild with tangling roots —
Sits o’er his newly-gather’d fruits,
Beside his crystal well!
35 Or haply to his ev’ning thought,
By unfrequented stream,
The ways of men are distant brought,
A faint-collected dream:
While praising, and raising
40 His thoughts to Heav’n on high,
As wand’ring, meand’ring,
He views the solemn sky.
Than I, no lonely Hermit plac’d
Where never human footstep trac’d,
45 Less fit to play the part;
The lucky moment to improve,
And just to stop, and just to move,
With self-respecting art:
But ah! those pleasures, Loves, and Joys,
50 Which I too keenly taste,
The Solitary can despise,
Can want and yet be blest!
He needs not, he heeds not
Or human love or hate;
55 Whilst I here, must cry here
At perfidy ingrate!
O enviable early days,
When dancing thoughtless Pleasure’s maze,
To Care, to Guilt unknown!
60 How ill exchang’d for riper times,
To feel the follies or the crimes
Of others, or my own!
Ye tiny elves that guiltless sport,
Like linnets in the bush,
65 Ye little know the ills ye court,
When Manhood is your wish!
The losses, the crosses
That active man engage;
The fears all, the tears all
70 Of dim declining Age!
While this poem can be dated to the time of his estrangement from Jean Armour (see The Lament), it is also symptomatic of the bouts of depression, which, as their external causes increased, plagued his adult life. With masochistic logic he defines himself as a chronically displaced person with neither the opposing talents of the material man of business nor the spiritual hermit to locate himself appropriately in the world. The biographical letter of August 1787 to Dr Moore is another example of Burns turning prose, this time his marvellous own, into poetry:
– The great misfortune of my life was never to have an aim –. I had felt early some stirrings of Ambition, but they were the blind gropins [sic] of Homer’s Cyclops round the walls of his cave: I saw my father’s situation entailed on me perpetual labor. – The only two doors by which I could enter the fields of fortune were, the most niggardly economy, or the little chicaning art of bargain-making: the first is so contracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it; the last, I always hated the contamination of the threshold. – Thus, abandoned of [every (deleted)] aim or view in life; with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark; a constitutional hypochondriac taint which made me fly solitude; add to all these incentives to social life, my reputation for bookish knowledge, a certain wild, logical talent, and a strength of thought something like the rudiments of good sense, made me generally a welcome guest; so ’tis no great wonder that always “where two or three were met together, there was I in the midst of them” (Letter 125).
The semi-vacuous self of this poem is further pervaded by chronic guilt and, in the last stanza, a sense of childhood uncomprehending of the losses and crosses that await the adult. If this sounds more the agonised Coleridge than Burns, this is not accidental. An admirer of Burns’s innovative prosody: ‘Bowles, the most tender and, with the exception of Burns, the only always-natural poet in our Language’ (Low, Critical Heritage, p. 108), Coleridge also identified profoundly with this dark side of the Scottish poet.
As George Dekker makes clear in Coleridge and the Literature of Sensibility (London, 1978), Burns’s Despondency: An Ode was a seminal tonal and thematic influence on Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode. It is perhaps a case of it taking one to know one. Equally the manically protean self-mocking, self-making tone is a common factor in both poets’ letters. Presumably it was not this quality which caused that inspired Scottish talent spotter, James Perry (Pirie) (1756 – 1821) to attempt to lure both men to come to London to work for his radically-inclined Morning Chronicle. If anything Coleridge’s often also disguised contributions to the paper in the early 1790s are at least as dissidently radical as Burns’s.
Man Was Made to Mourn: A Dirge
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Tune: Peggy Bawn
When chill November’s surly blast
Made fields and forests bare,
One ev’ning, as I wand’red forth
Along the banks of AIRE, Ayr
5 I spy’d a man, whose aged step
Seem’d weary, worn with care,
His face was furrow’d o’er with years,
And hoary was his hair.
Young stranger, whither wand’rest thou?
10 Began the rev�
�rend Sage;
Does thirst of wealth thy step constrain,
Or youthful Pleasure’s rage?
Or haply, prest with cares and woes,
Too soon thou hast began
15 To wander forth, with me to mourn
The miseries of Man.
The Sun that overhangs yon moors,
Out-spreading far and wide,
Where hundreds labour to support
20 A haughty lordling’s pride:
I’ve seen yon weary winter-sun
Twice forty times return;
And ev’ry time has added proofs,
That Man was made to mourn.
25 O Man! while in thy early years,
How prodigal of time!
Mis-spending all thy precious hours,
Thy glorious, youthful prime!
Alternate Follies take the sway,
30 Licentious Passions burn;
Which tenfold force gives Nature’s law,
That Man was made to mourn.
Look not alone on youthful Prime,
Or Manhood’s active might;
35 Man then is useful to his kind,
Supported is his right:
But see him on the edge of life,
With Cares and Sorrows worn;
Then Age and Want, Oh! ill-match’d pair!
40 Shew Man was made to mourn!
A few seem favourites of Fate,
In Pleasure’s lap carest;
Yet think not all the Rich and Great
Are likewise truly blest:
45 But Oh! what crouds in ev’ry land,
All wretched and forlorn,
Thro’ weary life this lesson learn,
That Man was made to mourn.
Many and sharp the num’rous Ills
50 Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
Regret, Remorse, and Shame!
And Man, whose heav’n-erected face,
The smiles of love adorn,
55 Man’s inhumanity to Man