A mortal quite unfit for Fortune's strife,
Yet oft the sport of all the ills of life;
Prone to enjoy each pleasure riches give,
Yet haply wanting wherewithal to live;
Longing to wipe each tear, to heal each groan,
Yet frequent all unheeded in his own.
But honest Nature is not quite a Turk;
She laughed at first, then felt for her poor work.
Pitying the propless climber of mankind,
She cast about a standard tree to find;
And, to support his helpless woodbine state,
Attached him to the generous truly great,
A title, and the only one I claim,
To lay strong hold for help on bounteous
Graham.
Pity the tuneful Muses' hapless train,
Weak, timid landsmen on life's stormy main !
Their hearts no selfish stern absorbent stuff,
That never gives-though humbly takes
enough;
The little fate allows, they share as soon,
Unlike sage proverb'd wisdom's hard-wrung
The world were blest did bliss on them depend: Ah, that "the friendly e'er should want a
Let prudence number o'er each sturdy son,
Who life and wisdom at one race begun,
Who feel by reason and who give by rule
(Instinct's a brute, and sentiment a fool!) —
Who make poor will do wait upon I should
We own they're prudent, but who feels they're
good?
Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye!
God's image rudely etched on base alloy !
But come, ye who the godlike pleasure know,
Heaven's attribute distinguished — to bestow!
Whose arms of love would grasp the human
Come thou who giv'st with all a courtier's grace,
Friend of my life, true patron of my rhymes,
Prop of my dearest hopes for future times!
Why shrinks my soul half-blushing, half-afraid,
Backward, abashed, to ask thy friendly aid?
I know my need, I know thy giving hand,
I crave thy friendship at thy kind command;
But there are such who court the tuneful
Nine
Heavens should the branded character be
Whose verse in manhood's pride sublimely
Yet vilest reptiles in their begging prose.
Mark, how their lofty independent spirit
Soars on the spurning wing of injured merit!
Seek not the proofs in private life to find;
Pity the best of words should be but wind!
So to heaven's gate the lark's shrill song
But grovelling on the earth the carol ends.
In all the clam'rous cry of starving want,
They dun benevolence with shameless front;
Oblige them, patronise their tinsel lays,
They persecute you all your future days!
Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain,
My horny fist assume the plough again;
The piebald jacket let me patch once more;
On eighteenpence a week I've lived before.
Though, thanks to Heaven, I dare even that
last shift!
I trust, meantime, my boon is in thy gift:
That, placed by thee upon the wished-for height,
Where, man and nature fairer in her sight,
My Muse may imp her wing for some sublimer
flight.
MRS. FERGUSSON OF CRAIGDARROCH'S LAMENTATION FOR THE DEATH OF HER SON,
AN UNCOMMONLY PROMISING YOUTH OF EIGHTEEN OK NINETEEN YEARS OF AGE.
“I am just arrived from Nithsdale, and will be here a fortnight. I was on horseback this morning by three o'clock; for between my wife and my farm is just
forty-six miles. As I jogged on in the dark, I was taken with a poetic fit as follows."- Burns to Mrs. Dunlop, 27th Sept. 1788.
FATE gave the word, the arrow sped,
And pierced my darling's heart;
And with him all the joys are fled
Life can to me impart.
By cruel hands the sapling drops,
In dust dishonoured laid:
So fell the pride of all my hopes,
My age's future shade.
The mother linnet in the brake
Bewails her ravished young;
So I, for my lost darling's sake,
Lament the live-day long.
Death! oft I've feared thy fatal blow,
Now, fond I bare my breast;
Oh, do thou kindly lay me low
With him I love, at rest!1
1 It is a curious circumstance regarding the brief poem conveyed by this letter, that a copy of it in the possession of Mr. Allason Cunninghame of Logan House, Ayrshire, is understood by that gentleman's family to have been sent to his grandmother, Burns's early patron, Mrs. General Stewart of Afton, as a deploration of the death of her only son, Alexander Gordon Stewart, who died at a military academy at Strasburg, the 5th December, 1787. Allan Cunningham speaks of a copy of the poem in his possession bearing a note by the author, which shows that he really had endeavored to turn แ The this piece to the account of gratifying two friends.
THE lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill,
Concealing the course of the dark-winding rill; How languid the scenes, late so sprightly, appear!
As Autumn to Winter resigns the pale year.
The forests are leafless, the meadows are brown,
And all the gay foppery of Summer is flown:
Apart let me wander, apart let me muse,
How quick Time is flying, how keen Fate
pursues !
Mother's Lament," he says, 66
was composed partly with a
view to Mrs. Fergusson of Craigdarroch, and partly to the
worthy patroness of my early muse, Mrs. Stewart of Afton."
We may suppose that the parity of the two cases, and their
nearness in point of time, had produced but one indivisible
impression in the mind of the bard. Yet there is reason to
believe that, in his complaisance towards his friends, he was
somewhat over-eager to gratify them with poetical compli-
ments, and oftener than once caused one to pay a double
debt. We shall find that the little poem beginning, Sensibil-
ity, how charming, was first written on certain experiences of
Mrs. M'Lehose, and sent to her, but afterwards addressed to
66 'my dear and much-honoured friend, Mrs. Dunlop." So the
reader will perceive that even Burns had his little mystères
d'atelier.
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