Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 127: IN EVIL DAYS

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About This Book

A collected selection of the poet's songs and shorter lyrics presents his explorations of love, nature, rural Scottish life, patriotism, and social observation, often rendered in Scots dialect and intended for musical performance. The volume groups brief pieces alongside several longer poems, supplies a glossary of dialect terms and an index of first lines, and includes illustrative plates. Many lyrics evoke landscapes, domestic scenes, and communal gatherings, balancing tenderness and satire while varying tone from celebratory to elegiac. The arrangement favors lyrical vitality rather than strict chronology, offering readers both popular airs and more extended narrative poems within a single accessible anthology.

IN EVIL DAYS

(FROM A LETTER TO GRAHAM OF FINTRY, 1791)

I dread thee, Fate, relentless and severe,

With all a poet’s, husband’s, father’s fear!

Already one strong-hold of hope is lost,

Glencairn, the truly noble, lies in dust—

Fled, like the sun eclips’d as noon appears,

And left us darkling in a world of tears.

Oh! hear my ardent, grateful, selfish pray’r!

Fintry, my other stay, long bless and spare!

Thro’ a long life his hopes and wishes crown,

And bright in cloudless skies his sun go down!