A few short months, and glad and gay, Can gladness bring again to me. 'I am a bending, agèd tree, That long has stood the wind and rain; But now has come a cruel blast, And my last hold of earth is gane: Nae leaf o' mine shall greet the spring, Nae simmer sun exalt my bloom; But I maun lie before the storm, And ithers plant them in my room. 'I've seen sae monie changefu' years, Alike unknowing and unknown; I bear alane my lade o' care, For silent, low, on beds of dust, Lie a' that would my sorrows share. 'And last (the sum of a' my griefs!) His country's pride! his country's stay— For a' the life of life is dead, And hope has left my agèd ken, Awake thy last sad voice, my harp! Then sleep in silence evermair! And thou, my last, best, only friend, That fillest an untimely tomb, Accept this tribute from the bard Thou brought from Fortune's mirkest gloom. 'In Poverty's low barren vale Thick mists, obscure, involved me round; Though oft I turned the wistful eye, Nae ray of fame was to be found: 'O why has worth so short a date? While villains ripen gray with time; Fall in bold manhood's hardy prime! A day to me so full of wo!- "The bridegroom may forget the bride, That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; And a' that thou hast done for me!' LINES SENT TO SIR JOHN WHITEFOORD, BART. OF WHITEFOORD, WITH THE FOREGOING POEM. Thou, who thy honour as thy God rever❜st, Who, save thy mind's reproach, nought earthly fear'st, The tearful tribute of a broken heart. The friend thou valued'st, I the patron loved; His worth, his honour, all the world approved. We'll mourn till we too go as he has gone, And tread the dreary path to that dark world unknown. On the same melancholy subject Burns wrote the two following letters. The gentleman here addressed was Lord Glencairn's factor or land-agent, and had been instrumental in bringing the bard into notice. TO MR ALEXANDER DALZELL, FACTOR, FINDLAYSTON. ELLISLAND, 19th March 1791. MY DEAR SIR-I have taken the liberty to frank this letter to you, as it encloses an idle poem of mine, which I send you; and, God knows, you may perhaps pay dear enough for it if you read it through. Not that this is my own opinion; but the author, by the time he has composed and corrected his work, has quite pored away all his powers of critical discrimination. I can easily guess, from my own heart, what you have felt on a late most melancholy event. God knows what I have suffered at the loss of my best friend, my first and dearest patron and benefactor; the man to whom I owe all that I am and have! I am gone into mourning for him, and with more sincerity of grief than I fear some will, who, by nature's ties, ought to feel on the occasion. I will be exceedingly obliged to you, indeed, to let me know the news of the noble family; how the poor mother and the two sisters support their loss. I had a packet of poetic bagatelles ready to send to Lady Betty, when I saw the fatal tidings in the newspaper. I see, by the same channel, that the honoured REMAINS of my noble patron are designed to be brought to the family burial-place. Dare I trouble you to let me know privately before the day of interment, that I may cross the country, and steal among the crowd, to pay a tear to the last sight of my ever-revered benefactor? It will oblige me beyond expression. R. B. TO LADY E. CUNNINGHA M.1 MY LADY—I would, as usual, have availed myself of the privilege your goodness has allowed me, of sending you anything I compose in my poetical way; but as I had resolved, so soon as the shock of my irreparable loss would allow me, to pay a tribute to my late benefactor, I determined to make that the first piece I should do myself the honour of sending you. Had the wing of my fancy been equal to the ardour of my heart, the enclosed had been much more worthy your perusal: as it is, I beg leave to lay it at your ladyship's feet. As all the world knows my obligations to the late Earl of Glencairn, I would wish to shew, as openly, that my heart glows, and shall ever glow, with the most grateful sense and remembrance of his lordship's goodness. The sables I did myself the honour to wear to his lordship's memory were not the 'mockery of wo.' Nor shall my gratitude perish with me! If among my children I shall have a son that has a heart, he shall hand it down to his child as a family honour and a family debt, that my dearest existence I owe to the noble house of Glencairn! I was about to say, my lady, that if you think the poem may venture to see the light, I would, in some way or other, give it to the world. R. B. In the latter part of March, Burns had the misfortune to come down with his horse, and break his right arm. Janet Little, the poetical milkmaid, had come to see him, and was waiting at Ellisland when the bard returned in the disabled state to which he 1 Sister of the recently deceased, and of the then existing, Earls of Glencairn. Her ladyship died unmarried, August 1804. 2 The poem enclosed was the Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn. had been reduced by the accident. She has related, in simple verse, her own painful alarm when the sad intelligence resounded through his hall-the sympathy with which she regarded the tears of his affectionate Jean-and the double embarrassment she experienced in greeting at such a crisis the illustrious poet whom she had formerly trembled to meet at all.1 In the course of a few weeks, he was so far recovered as to write with his own hand. TO MRS DUNLOP. ELLISLAND, [7th April] 1791. When I tell you, madam, that by a fall, not from my horse, but with my horse, I have been a cripple some time, and that this is the first day my arm and hand have been able to serve me in writing, you will allow that it is too good an apology for my seemingly ungrateful silence. I am now getting better, and am able to rhyme a little, which implies some tolerable ease, as I cannot think that the most poetic genius is able to compose on the rack. I do not remember if ever I mentioned to you, my having an idea of composing an elegy on the late Miss Burnet of Monboddo. I had the honour of being pretty well acquainted with her, and have seldom felt so much at the loss of an acquaintance, as when I heard that so amiable and accomplished a piece of God's work was no more. I have as yet gone no further than the following fragment, of which please let me have your opinion. You know that elegy is a subject so much exhausted, that any new idea on the business is not to be expected; 'tis well if we can place an old idea in a new light. How far I have succeeded as to this last, you will judge from what follows: * * * I have proceeded no further. Your kind letter, with your kind remembrance of your godson, came safe. This last, madam, is scarcely what my pride can bear. As to the little fellow,' he is, partiality apart, the finest boy I have for a long time seen. He is now seventeen months old, has the small-pox and measles over, has cut several teeth, and never had a grain of doctors' drugs in his bowels. I am truly happy to hear that the 'little floweret' is blooming so fresh and fair, and that the mother plant' is rather recovering her drooping head. Soon and well may her cruel wounds' be healed! I have written thus far with a good deal of difficulty. When I get a little abler, you shall hear further from, madam, yours, 1 Contemporaries of Burns, p. 82. 2 The infant, Francis Wallace Burns, the poet's second son. R. B. Very soon after, Mrs Burns brought her husband a third son, on whom the appellation of William Nicol was conferred-an individual who has since passed through an honourable military career in India, and is now recognised as Lieutenant-Colonel Burns. TO MRS DUNLOP. ELLISLAND, 11th April 1791. I am once more able, my honoured friend, to return you, with my own hand, thanks for the many instances of your friendship, and particularly for your kind anxiety in this last disaster that my evil genius had in store for me. However, life is chequered-joy and sorrow-for on Saturday morning last [the 9th], Mrs Burns made me a present of a fine boy; rather stouter, but not so handsome as your godson was at his time of life. Indeed, I look on your little namesake to be my chef-d'œuvre in that species of manufacture, as I look on Tam o' Shanter to be my standard performance in the poetical line. 'Tis true, both the one and the other discover a spice of roguish waggery, that might perhaps be as well spared; but then they also shew, in my opinion, a force of genius, and a finishing polish, that I despair of ever excelling. Mrs Burns is getting stout again, and laid as lustily about her to-day at breakfast as a reaper from the corn-ridge. That is the peculiar privilege and blessing of our hale, sprightly damsels, that are bred among the hay and heather. We cannot hope for that highly-polished mind, that charming delicacy of soul, which is found among the female world in the more elevated stations of life, and which is certainly by far the most bewitching charm in the famous cestus of Venus. It is, indeed, such an inestimable treasure, that where it can be had in its native heavenly purity, unstained by some one or other of the many shades of affectation, and unalloyed by some one or other of the many species of caprice, I declare to Heaven I should think it cheaply purchased at the expense of every other earthly good! But as this angelic creature is, I am afraid, extremely rare in any station and rank of life, and totally denied to such an humble one as mine, we meaner mortals must put up with the next rank of female excellence-as fine a figure and face we can produce as any rank of life whatever; rustic, native grace; unaffected modesty and unsullied purity; nature's mother-wit, and the rudiments of taste; a simplicity of soul, unsuspicious of, because unacquainted with, the crooked ways of a selfish, interested, disingenuous world; and the dearest charm of all the rest-a yielding sweetness of disposition, and a generous warmth of heart, grateful for love on our part, and ardently glowing with a more than equal return: these, with a healthy frame, a sound, vigorous constitution, which your higher |