The Canongate Burns (105 page)
Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
First printed in
The Clarinda Correspondence
, 1834.
When dear Clarinda, matchless fair,
       First struck Sylvander's raptur'd view,
He gaz'd, he listen'd to despair,
       Alas! âtwas all he dared to do. â
5
Love, from Clarinda's heavenly eyes,
       Transfix'd his bosom thro' and thro';
But still in Friendship's guarded guise,
       For more the demon fear'd to do. â
That heart, already more than lost
10
       The imp beleaguer'd all
perdue
;
lost
For frowning Honor kept his post,
       To meet that frown he shrunk to do. â
His pangs the Bard refus'd to own,
       Tho' half he wish'd Clarinda knew:
15
But Anguish wrung the unweeting groan â
       Who blames what frantic Pain must do?
That heart, where motley follies blend,
       Was sternly still to Honor true:
To prove Clarinda's fondest friend,
20
       Was what a Lover sure might do. â
The Muse his ready quill employ'd,
       No nearer bliss he could pursue;
That bliss Clarinda cold deny'd â
       âSend word by Charles how you do!' â
25
The chill behest disarm'd his Muse,
       Till Passion all impatient grew:
He wrote, and hinted for excuse,
       â'Twas 'cause he'd nothing else to do.' â
But by those hopes I have above!
30
       And by those faults I dearly rue!
The deed, the boldest mark of love,
       For thee that deed I dare to do! â
O, could the Fates but name the price,
       Would bless me with your charms and you!
35
With frantic joy I'd pay it thrice,
       If human art or power could do!
Then take, Clarinda, friendship's hand,
       (Friendship, at least, I may avow;)
And lay no more your chill command,
40
       I'll write, whatever I've to do. â
Sylvander. Wednesday night
Although it traces the painful fluctuations of the sexually repressed relationship, this poem has the artificial, sentimental tone of most of the Burns/McLehose epistolary correspondence. It has none of the austere power of
Ae Fond Kiss
.
With a Pair of Wine-Glasses
First printed by Stewart, 1802.
Fair Empress of the Poet's soul,
      And Queen of Poetesses;
Clarinda, take this little boon,
      This humble pair of Glasses.
5
And fill them high with generous juice,
      As generous as your mind;
And pledge them to the generous toast â
      âThe whole of Humankind!'
âTo those who love us!' â second fill;
10
      But not to those whom we love,
Lest we love those who love not us: â
      A third â âto thee and me, Love!'
Long may we live! Long may we love!
      And long may we be happy!!!
15
And may we never want a Glass,
      Well charg'd with generous Nappy!!!!
This was written by Burns to Mrs McLehose before he left Edinburgh in March 1788. The verses and present of glasses were given
on 17th March, 1788. Mackay, surprisingly, has dropped the final stanza (See p. 321), an error found in Henley and Henderson (1896). The final stanza is included by most editors from 1834 onwards and is found in Kinsley (no. 219, p. 327â8).
Tune: Mary weep no more for me, or Mary's Dream
First printed by Chambers, 1838.
MY heart is wae and unco wae,
sad, mighty sad
      To think upon the raging sea,
That roars between her gardens green,
      An' th' bonie lass of ALBANIE. â
5
This lovely maid's of noble blood,
      That ruled Albion's kingdoms three;
But Oh, Alas! for her bonie face!
      They hae wranged the lass of ALBANIE. â
have wronged
In the rolling tide of spreading Clyde
10
      There sits an isle of high degree;
1
And a town of fame
2
whose princely name
      Should grace the lass of ALBANIE. â
But there is a youth, a witless youth,
3
      That fills the place where she should be,
15
We'll send him o'er to his native shore,
      And bring our ain sweet ALBANIE. â
own
Alas the day, and woe the day,
      A false Usurper wan the gree,
won the honours
Who now commands the towers and lands,
20
      The royal right of ALBANIE. â
We'll daily pray, we'll nightly pray,
      On bended knees most ferventlie,
That the time may come, with pipe and drum,
      We'll welcome hame fair ALBANIE. â
home
Charlotte Stuart (1753â89) was the daughter of Charles Edward Stuart and his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw. On 6th December, 1787 she was officially titled Duchess of Albany. Charles Edward lived in exile from Scotland until his death on 31st January, 1788. Aware of the former Jacobite leader's daughter being given this title, Burns wrote the above in dedication to the forlorn cause of the Stuarts and their claim to the British throne. Evidence from an as yet unpublished manuscript collection of letters between Burns and Robert Ainslie reveal that the poet considered naming one of his illegitimate children, if a girl, Charlotte, after the Duchess of Albany.
First printed as a censored fragment by Currie, 1800.
AFAR th' illustrious Exile roams,
      Whom kingdoms on this day should hail!
An Inmate in the casual shed;
      On transient Pity's bounty fed;
5
Haunted by busy Mem'ry's bitter tale!
Beasts of the forest have their savage homes,
      But He who should imperial purple wear
Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head:
      His wretched refuge, dark Despair,
10
While ravening Wrongs and Woes pursue,
      And distant far the faithful Few
            Who would his sorrows share!
            False flatterer, Hope, away!
Nor think to lure us as in days of yore:
15
      We solemnize this sorrowing natal day,
To prove our loyal truth â we can no more;
      And, owning Heaven's mysterious sway,
             Submissive, low adore.
           Ye honor'd, mighty Dead
20
       Who nobly perish'd in the glorious cause,
       Your King, your Country, and her Laws;
From great Dundee
1
who smiling Victory led,
       And fell a Martyr in her arms,
       (What breast of northern ice but warms)
25
To bold Balmerino's
2
undying name,
Whose soul of fire, lighted at Heaven's high flame,
Deserves the brightest wreath departed heroes claim;
       Not unreveng'd your fate shall lie;
              It only lags, the fatal hour:
30
       Your blood shall with incessant cry
              Awake at last th' unsparing Power!
As from the cliff with thundering course
       The snowy ruin smokes along,
With doubling speed and gathering force,
35
Till deep it crashing whelms the cottage in the vale;
       So Vengeance' arm, ensanguin'd, strong,
              Shall with resistless might assail:
       Usurping Brunswick's
3
head shall lowly lay,
And Stewart's wrongs and yours with tenfold weight repay.
40
Perdition, baleful child of Night,
Rise and revenge the injur'd right
       Of Stewart's ROYAL RACE!
Lead on th' unmuzzled hounds of Hell
Till all the frighted Echoes tell
45
       The blood-notes of the chase!
Full on the quarry point their view,
Full on the base, usurping crew,
The tools of Faction, and the Nation's curse:
       Hark! how the cry grows on the wind;
50
       They leave the lagging gale behind;
Their savage fury pitiless they pour,
With murdering eyes already they devour:
       See, Brunswick spent, a wretched prey;
       His life, one poor, despairing day
55
Where each avenging hour still ushers in a worse!
       Such Havock, howling all abroad,
              Their utter ruin bring;
       The base Apostates to their God,
              Or Rebels to their KING!
Currie printed only a fragment of this work in 1800, leaving out ll. 1â12, and ll. 36â59 due to their violent, anti-Hanoverian imagery which would have been construed as treasonable. They contain a wished-for image in which King George III's brother-in-law, the Duke of Brunswick, has his head chopped off (l. 38). Henley and Henderson censored this image and doctored the poem with their own anodyne phrase to read that Brunswick's â
pride
shall lay' rather than his
head
âshall lowly lay'. Kinsley rightly corrects this, but it is copied in the Mackay edition which so often employs the 1896 Henderson and Henley texts. The poem was printed in full by Chambers-Wallace, after the Glenriddell manuscripts appeared. Scott Douglas reverted back to the Currie fragment in 1876.
Jacobitism was still politically taboo in 1800 and criticism of the British monarchy and their relations was for most of the nineteenth century, not the proper thing for a poet to indulge in. When Currie printed the fragment he, quite pathetically, tried to add a Hanoverian gloss to the already censored piece by claiming that those who gathered with Burns in Edinburgh on 31st December, 1787 to celebrate the exiled Stuart King's birthday, were all âperfectly loyal to the King [George] on the throne'. This is far from the case. As Donaldson comments, those who met to celebrate the birthday of Charles Edward Stuart (still living at this time, in France) were ânot sentimental dabblers but the hard core of the party in Scotland and the poet was clearly
persona grata
amongst them' (W. Donaldson,
The Jacobite Song
, p. 76). Aware he was among people related by blood to the Jacobites who died or lost lands after the 1745 rebellion, Burns wrote on his manuscript that was passed around that evening: âBurn the above verses when you have read them, as any little sense that is in them is rather heretical, and do me the justice to believe me sincere in my grateful remembrances of the many civilities you have honoured me with since I came to Edinburgh' (Donaldson, p. 76).
Currie denigrates the poem's literary quality, describing it as a ârant' that was âdeficient in the complicated rhythm and polished versification that such compositions require' (Currie, Vol. 1, pp. lxiâlxii). Kinsley, who was not under any political pressure to denigrate the politics of Burns, flogs the same horse in his disdainful: âit is another of Burns's calamitous attempts at the Pindaric Ode' (Vol. III, p. 1256). For a contrary view of Burns and the Pindaric Ode, see notes to
A Winter's Night
.
The cataclysmic forces of the avalanche are here shown to deluge the Hanoverians in vengeance for their treatment of the Stuarts
(ll. 33â9) by a masterly kinetic use of language. The image of Scotland deluged in blood at the degenerate anarchy described in
On the Death of Lord President Dundas
is surpassed in what is only partly a Pindaric Ode, given that an adapted form of the Scots stanza of
The Cherry and the Slae
is neatly employed to bring the poem to its climax. The image of âVengeance' arm' (l. 36) and the declamatory âNation's curse' are repeated in the new
The Ghost of Bruce
, second version.
1
âBonnie' Dundee: John Grahman of Claverhouse, d. 1689.
2
Lord Balmerino, Arthur Elphinstone (168塉1746) fought at Sheriffmuir with the Earl of Mar. He was captured at Culloden and executed in London, 18th August, 1746.
3
The Duke of Brunswick (1735â1806) was brother-in-law to George III and led the Prussian and Austrian armies against France in 1792, boasting he would bring Paris to its knees through starvation.