The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. / With a New Life of the Poet, and Notices, Critical and Biographical by Allan Cunningham

THE FIRST PSALM.

[This version was first printed in the second edition of the poet’s work. It cannot be regarded as one of his happiest compositions: it is inferior, not indeed in ease, but in simplicity and antique rigour of language, to the common version used in the Kirk of Scotland. Burns had admitted “Death and Dr. Hornbook” into Creech’s edition, and probably desired to balance it with something at which the devout could not cavil.]

THE FIRST SIX VERSES

OF THE

NINETIETH PSALM.

[The ninetieth Psalm is said to have been a favourite in the household of William Burns: the version used by the Kirk, though unequal, contains beautiful verses, and possesses the same strain of sentiment and moral reasoning as the poem of “Man was made to Mourn.” These verses first appeared in the Edinburgh edition; and they might have been spared; for in the hands of a poet ignorant of the original language of the Psalmist, how could they be so correct in sense and expression as in a sacred strain is not only desirable but necessary?]

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN

APRIL, 1786.

[This was not the original title of this sweet poem: I have a copy in the handwriting of Burns entitled “The Gowan.” This more natural name he changed as he did his own, without reasonable cause; and he changed it about the same time, for he ceased to call himself Burness and his poem “The Gowan,” in the first edition of his works. The field at Mossgiel where he turned down the Daisy is said to be the same field where some five months before he turned up the Mouse; but this seems likely only to those who are little acquainted with tillage—who think that in time and place reside the chief charms of verse; and who feel not the beauty of “The Daisy,” till they seek and find the spot on which it grew. Sublime morality and the deepest emotions of the soul pass for little with those who remember only what the genius loves to forget.]

EPISTLE TO A YOUNG FRIEND.

MAY, 1786.

[Andrew Aikin, to whom this poem of good counsel is addressed, was one of the sons of Robert Aiken, writer in Ayr, to whom the Cotter’s Saturday Night is inscribed. He became a merchant in Liverpool, with what success we are not informed, and died at St. Petersburgh. The poet has been charged with a desire to teach hypocrisy rather than truth to his “Andrew dear;” but surely to conceal one’s own thoughts and discover those of others, can scarcely be called hypocritical: it is, in fact, a version of the celebrated precept of prudence, “Thoughts close and looks loose.” Whether he profited by all the counsel showered upon him by the muse we know not: he was much respected—his name embalmed, like that of his father, in the poetry of his friend, is not likely soon to perish.]

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

TO A LOUSE,

ON SEEING ONE IN A LADY’S BONNET, AT CHURCH

[A Mauchline incident of a Mauchline lady is related in this poem, which to many of the softer friends of the bard was anything but welcome: it appeared in the Kilmarnock copy of his Poems, and remonstrance and persuasion were alike tried in vain to keep it out of the Edinburgh edition. Instead of regarding it as a seasonable rebuke to pride and vanity, some of his learned commentators called it course and vulgar—those classic persons might have remembered that Julian, no vulgar person, but an emperor and a scholar, wore a populous beard, and was proud of it.]

EPISTLE TO J. RANKINE,

ENCLOSING SOME POEMS.

[The person to whom these verses are addressed lived at Adamhill in Ayrshire, and merited the praise of rough and ready-witted, which the poem bestows. The humorous dream alluded to, was related by way of rebuke to a west country earl, who was in the habit of calling all people of low degree “Brutes!—damned brutes.” “I dreamed that I was dead,” said the rustic satirist to his superior, “and condemned for the company I kept. When I came to hell-door, where mony of your lordship’s friends gang, I chappit, and ‘Wha are ye, and where d’ye come frae?’ Satan exclaimed. I just said, that my name was Rankine, and I came frae yere lordship’s land. ‘Awa wi’ you,’ cried Satan, ye canna come here: hell’s fou o’ his lordship’s damned brutes already.’”]

ON A SCOTCH BARD,

GONE TO THE WEST INDIES.

[Burns in this Poem, as well as in others, speaks openly of his tastes and passions: his own fortunes are dwelt on with painful minuteness, and his errors are recorded with the accuracy, but not the seriousness of the confessional. He seems to have been fond of taking himself to task. It was written when “Hungry ruin had him in the wind,” and emigration to the West Indies was the only refuge which he could think of, or his friends suggest, from the persecutions of fortune.]

THE FAREWELL.

Thomson.

[In these serious stanzas, where the comic, as in the lines to the Scottish bard, are not permitted to mingle, Burns bids farewell to all on whom his heart had any claim. He seems to have looked on the sea as only a place of peril, and on the West Indies as a charnel-house.]

I.

II.

WRITTEN

ON THE BLANK LEAF OF A COPY OF MY POEMS, PRESENTED TO AN OLD SWEETHEART, THEN MARRIED.

[This is another of the poet’s lamentations, at the prospect of “torrid climes” and the roars of the Atlantic. To Burns, Scotland was the land of promise, the west of Scotland his paradise; and the land of dread, Jamaica! I found these lines copied by the poet into a volume which he presented to Dr. Geddes: they were addressed, it is thought, to the “Dear E.” of his earliest correspondence.]

A DEDICATION

TO

GAVIN HAMILTON, ESQ.

[The gentleman to whom these manly lines are addressed, was of good birth, and of an open and generous nature: he was one of the first of the gentry of the west to encourage the muse of Coila to stretch her wings at full length. His free life, and free speech, exposed him to the censures of that stern divine, Daddie Auld, who charged him with the sin of absenting himself from church for three successive days; for having, without the fear of God’s servant before him, profanely said damn it, in his presence, and far having gallopped on Sunday. These charges were contemptuously dismissed by the presbyterial court. Hamilton was the brother of the Charlotte to whose charms, on the banks of Devon, Burns, it is said, paid the homage of a lover, as well as of a poet. The poem had a place in the Kilmarnock edition, but not as an express dedication.]

ELEGY

ON

THE DEATH OF ROBERT RUISSEAUX.

[Cromek found these verses among the loose papers of Burns, and printed them in the Reliques. They contain a portion of the character of the poet, record his habitual carelessness in worldly affairs, and his desire to be distinguished.]