The Canongate Burns (29 page)
Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
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,
        Â
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
         Makes countless thousands mourn!
See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight,
         So abject, mean, and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth
60
         To give him leave to toil;
And see his lordly
fellow-worm
         The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife
         And helpless offspring mourn.
65
If I'm design'd yon lordling's slave,
         By Nature's law design'd,
Why was an independent wish
         E'er planted in my mind?
If not, why am I subject to
70
         His cruelty, or scorn?
Or why has Man the will and pow'r
         To make his fellow mourn?
Yet let not this too much, my Son,
         Disturb thy youthful breast:
75
This partial view of human-kind
         Is surely not the
last
!
The poor, oppressed, honest man
         Had never, sure, been born,
Had there not been some recompence
80
         To comfort those that mourn!
O Death! the poor man's dearest friend,
         The kindest and the best!
Welcome the hour my aged limbs
         Are laid with thee at rest!
85
The great, the wealthy fear thy blow,
         From pomp and pleasure torn;
But, Oh! a blest relief to those
         That weary-laden mourn!
This was written sometime during the summer of 1785. It is entered in the
FCB
under August 1785. In his commentary on l. 5 of this poem Kinsley remarks that a âmeeting with a didactic sage is common in eighteenth-century poetry down to the time of Wordsworth. Burns's immediate model was apparently the white-haired “grateful form” encountered “on distant heaths beneath autumn skies” by Shenstone (
Elegies
, vii)'. It is characteristic of Kinsley that as a commentator on Burns's poems his eye is always fixed on the rear-view mirror hardly ever the road ahead. His commentary is eruditely, densely allusive to Burns's sources; he rarely has anything to say about Burns's seminal capacity to influence others, especially if the influence is of a political nature. Burns profoundly influenced Wordsworth. This poem, with its mixture of the elemental and political pains of existence, is probably the single best example of that influence. The depth of Burns's political passion in the poem can be gauged from Gilbert's account of its genesis when he noted
that several of his brother's poems were written to âbring forward some favourite sentiment of the author. He used to remark to me, that he could not well conceive a more mortifying picture of human life, than a man seeking work. In casting about in his mind how the sentiment might be brought forward, the elegy
Man was Made to
Mourn
was composed' (Currie, iii. 384). Ll. 57â64 are this sentiment turned into poetry.
Mary Jacobus is particularly astute in her awareness of the degree to which Wordsworth creativity derived from the Scottish poet's sense of the terrible injustices of the rampant agrarian revolution. As she remarks:
The Last of the Flock
confronts, not death, but destitution â the plight of the labouring poor. Burns's
Man was Made to Mourn:
A Dirge
was clearly in Wordsworth's mind during the spring of 1798, and its lament for the human condition shapes his poem (
Tradition and Experiment in Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads 1798
(Oxford: 1976), p. 202).
Wordsworth's
Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman
is, if anything, even closer to Burns's dirge. Simon Lee, a tragic version of Tam Sampson, is faced with not only the increasingly severe symptoms of geriatric decline but the brutal redundancy of, no longer useful, being cast into helpless destitution. This combination of age and political injustice exactly follows Burns and his poem is deliberately echoed in the last lines of Wordsworth's:
I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! The gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.
The Dirge is also echoed in Wordsworth's
Lines Written in Early
Spring
: âHave I not reason to lament/ What man has made of man?', (ll. 23â4). The Leech Gatherer in
Resolution and Independence
, a poem in which Burns (ll. 45â9) makes an unnamed appearance, is also partly derived from the Dirge. Wordsworth's poem perhaps postulates a more spiritual consolation than Burns's Dirge with its vision of that ultimate and absolute democratic equaliser, Death itself.
Tune: MacPherson's Farewell
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
The Wintry West extends his blast,
         And hail and rain does blaw;
Or, the stormy North sends driving forth
         The blinding sleet and snaw:
snow
5
While, tumbling brown, the Burn comes down,
         And roars frae bank to brae:
from
While bird and beast in covert, rest,
         And pass the heartless day.Â
âThe sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,'
1
10
         The joyless
winter-day
,
Let others fear, to me more dear
         Than all the pride of May:
The Tempest's howl, it
soothes
my soul,
         My
griefs
it seems to join;
15
The leafless trees my fancy please,
         Their
fate
resembles mine!
Thou POW'R SUPREME, whose mighty Scheme
         These
woes
of mine fulfill,
Here, firm I rest, they
must
be best,
20
         Because they are
Thy
Will!
Then all I want (Oh, do Thou grant
         This one request of mine!):
Since to
enjoy
Thou dost deny,
         Assist me to
resign
.Â
This song is âThe eldest of my printed pieces' Burns told Dr Moore (Letter 125). In the
FCB
the poet records the influence upon him of Nature during the most inclement of winter weather: âThere is scarcely any earthly object gives me more â I don't know if I should call it pleasure, but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me â than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and to hear a stormy wind howling among the trees & raving o'er the plain. â It is my best season for devotion â¦' The imagery of winter desolation cast in a melancholy vein runs through the poetry of Burns as a motif for individual loss, or resignation to a person's fate.
1
Dr Young, R.B.
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
O THOU unknown, Almighty Cause
       Of all my hope and fear!
In whose dread Presence, ere an hour,
       Perhaps I must appear!
5
If I have wander'd in those paths
       Of life I ought to shun;
As
Something
, loudly, in my breast,
       Remonstrates I have done.
Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me,
10
       With Passions wild and strong;
And list'ning to their witching voice
       Has often led me wrong.
Where human
weakness
has come short,
       Or
frailty
stept aside,
15
Do Thou, ALL-GOOD, for such Thou art,
       In shades of darkness hide.
Where with
intention
I have err'd,
       No other plea I have,
But,
Thou art good
; and Goodness still
20
       Delighteth to forgive.
This was almost certainly composed while the poet was at Irvine during the winter of 1781. The original title is, according to the copy in the
FCB
, âA Prayer when fainting fits and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy or some other dangerous disorder, which indeed still threatens me, first put Nature on the alarm'. Writing to his father, 27th December, 1781, Burns revealed his gloomy illness: âThe weakness of my nerves has so debilitated my mind that I dare not, either review past events, or look forward into futurity; for the least anxiety, or perturbation in my breast, produces most unhappy effects on my whole frame ⦠I am quite transported at the thought
that ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains, & uneasiness & disquietudes of this weary life; for I assure you I am heartily tired of it' (Letter 4). The poem is partly derived from the content of Pope's
Universal Prayer
, although the form is that of the Scottish metrical psalms.
On Turning One Down, with the Plough, in April, 1786
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
small
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
must, among, dust
                 Thy slender stem:
5
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
                 Thou bonie gem.
pretty
Â
Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
not, neighbour
The bonie
Lark
, companion meet!
handsome
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet!
wet
10
                 Wi' spreckl'd breast,
When upward-springing, blythe, to greet
                 The purpling East.
Cauld blew the bitter-biting
North
cold
Upon thy early, humble birth;
15
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,
20
High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield;
walls shall
But thou, beneath the random bield
shelter
                 O' clod or stane,
turf, stone
Adorns the histie
stibble-field
,
dry, stubble
                 Unseen, alane.
alone
25
There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread,
snow white
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
                 In humble guise;
But now the
share
uptears thy bed,
ploughshare/blade
30
                 And low thou lies!
Such is the fate of artless Maid,
Sweet
flow'ret
of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betray'd,
                 And guileless trust;
35
Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid
                 Low i' the dust.
Such is the fate of simple Bard,
On Life's rough ocean luckless starr'd!
Unskilful he to note the card
chart
40
                 Of
prudent Lore
,
wisdom
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
                 And whelm him o'er!
Such fate to
suffering Worth
is giv'n,
Who long with wants and woes has striv'n,
45
By human pride or cunning driv'n
                 To Mis'ry's brink;
Till, wrench'd of ev'ry stay but HEAV'N,
                 He, ruin'd, sink!
Ev'n thou who mourn'st the
Daisy's
fate,
50
That fate
is thine â no distant date;
Stern Ruin's
plough-share
drives elate,
                 Full on thy bloom,
Till crush'd beneath the
furrow's
weight
                 Shall be thy doom!
Henry Mackenzie, a frequent kiss of death for twentieth-century critical taste, waxed as eloquently about this poem as âThe Cotter's Saturday Night':
I have seldom met with an image more truly pastoral than that of the lark in the second stanza. Such strokes as these mark the pencil of the poet, which delineates Nature with the precision, yet with the delicate colouring of beauty and taste. (Low,
Critical Heritage
, p. 69).
Burns's own account of the poem in a letter to John Kennedy in April 1786 seems to suggest that he had produced a mawkish poem compatible with Mackenzie's cloying response:
I have here ⦠inclosed a small piece, the very latest of my productions. I am a good deal pleased with some sentiments in it myself, as they are just the native querulous feelings of a heart which, as the elegantly melting Gray says, “Melancholy has marked for her own” (Letter 27).
Certainly this is what Daiches (pp. 154â6) believes and he is also correct in saying that the inherent danger of sentimentality in animal poetry is even more extreme when dealing with plant life. Burns (Letter 56) could certainly descend to terrible bathos in this branch of his endeavours as he not infrequently set out his sentimentally-baited traps for socially superior women: âEven the hoary Hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart at such a time, must have been interested in its welfare, and wished it to be preserved from the rudely browsing cattle, or the withering eastern Blast?'
This poem, however, is not self-promotingly narcissistic. Nor is it a mere piece of lyric natural description as Mackenzie, probably deliberately, certainly imperceptively, remarked. It is as political as its âMouse' and âLouse' companion pieces. Like the mass of men, the daisy has to eke out its dangerously exposed existence outwith the walled security of the aristocratic garden flowers. The specific analogies of the daisy with the human world are all recurrent archetypes of suffering in Burns's imagination: the sexually violated woman; the imprudently overwhelmed poet; the Job-like, ruined but honest farmer. The poem has a dark, even apocalyptic tone partly derived from Young's
Night Thoughts
, IX, ll. 167â8: âStars rush; and final ruin fiercely drives/her ploughshare o'er creation!' which Burns amends to âStern Ruin's
plough share
drives elate'. It is definably sentimental but in the honourable sense that the sentimental poetry of the late eighteenth century, at its best, embodies a tragically irreconcilable sense that the great Enlightenment impulse towards the recognition of all human worth will not lead to a just, fearless democratic society. In 1802, his radicalism diminished, Wordsworth wrote his
To the Daisy
. It is, not least in metrical form, significantly influenced by Burns's version:
Methinks that there abides in thee
Some concord with humanity,
Given to no other flower I see
The forest through.