To mention but her name:
It heats me, it beets me, enraptures
And sets me a’ on flame!
O all ye Pow’rs who rule above!
O THOU whose very self art love!
115 THOU know’st my words sincere!
The life blood streaming thro’ my heart,
Or my more dear Immortal part,
Is not more fondly dear!
When heart-corroding care and grief
120 Deprive my soul of rest,
Her dear idea brings relief
And solace to my breast.
Thou BEING, All-seeing,
O hear my fervent pray’r!
125 Still take her, and make her
THY most peculiar care!
All hail! ye tender feelings dear!
The smile of love, the friendly tear,
The sympathetic glow!
130 Long since, this world’s thorny ways
Had number’d out my weary days,
Had it not been for you!
Fate still has blest me with a friend
In every care and ill;
135 And oft a more endearing band,
A tye more tender still. tie
It lightens, it brightens
The tenebrific scene, darkening/depressive
To meet with, and greet with
140 My DAVIE or my JEAN!
O, how that Name inspires my style!
The words come skelpin’ rank an’ file, rattling/running
Amaist before I ken! almost, know
The ready measure rins as fine, runs
145 As Phoebus and the famous Nine
Were glowran owre my pen. looking over
My spavet Pegasus will limp, lame, leg joint problems
Till ance he’s fairly het; once, hot
And then he’ll hilch, an’ stilt, an’ jimp, hobble, limp, jump
150 And rin an unco fit; run, rapid pace
But least then, the beast then
Should rue this hasty ride,
I’ll light now, and dight now wipe clean
His sweaty, wizen’d hide. withered
David Sillar (1760–1830) was one of several recipients of Burns’s Ayrshire epistolary poetry whom the Bard certainly overestimated poetically if not personally. Sillar had a mixed career as failed teacher then grocer but eventually inherited the family farm, Spittleside, Tarbolton and died a rich Irvine magistrate. This is the very reverse of the life of shared deprivation outlined for him and Burns himself in this poem. A good fiddler and composer (he composed the music to Burns’s The Rosebud), he published his less than mediocre Poems at Kilmarnock in 1789. His proximity to Burns can be gauged by ll. 114– 17 where, as in Sterne, rugged, biological reality constantly pene-trates the surface of fine feeling. The poem is a technically formidable example of Burns’s employment of Alexander Montgomerie’s The Cherry and the Slae measure which James VI defined as one example of ‘cuttit and broken verse, quhairof new formes daylie inuentit’ (Poems, STS, l. 82). Burns is, however, hardly ever given to technique for its own sake. As Daiches has remarked (p. 163), the poem is remarkable for its ability to mould the process of thought to such complex form. However, the nature of this thought itself is more questionable. The exposed multiple, tangible distresses of penury are expressed with extraordinary power throughout the poem as is the sense of chronic injustice between rich and poor. The compensations of poverty are less credible. Edwin Muir was particularly unhappy with ‘The heart ay’s the part ay, /That makes us right or wrang.’ Nor do the notions of compensatory and sexual harmony ring wholly true. Daiches in discussing stanza three, with its extraordinary initial delineation of the life of the beggars, defends the poem against such a sense of disparity between the desperate life it presents and the possible compensation for such a life thus:
Here the poet is not posturing for the benefit of the Edinburgh gentry, but letting the poem work itself easily into a lively expression of careless, cheerful view of life. The theme is a mood rather than a philosophy, a mood of defiance of the rich and happy acceptance of easygoing poverty. To seek for profundity of ethical thought here would be to miss the point of the poem, which seeks to capture a transitory state of mind rather than to state general principles (p. 163).
Arguably, rather than refuting it, this repeats the poem’s own inadequacy. Daiches, however, also considers that, after stanza seven, the poem falters badly. ‘Tenebrific’ (l. 138) is the poet’s neologism and not, certainly, the happiest of touches. The irresistible, Pegasian flood of language in the last stanza is a quite remarkable self-analysis of Burns in the grip of creativity.
1 Ramsay, R.B.
The Lament
Occasioned by the Unfortunate Issue of a Friend’s Amour
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Alas! how oft does Goodness wound itself,
And sweet Affection prove the spring of Woe!
HOME.
O thou pale Orb, that silent shines
While care-untroubled mortals sleep!
Thou seest a wretch who inly pines,
And wanders here to wail and weep!
5 With Woe I nightly vigils keep,
Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam;
And mourn, in lamentation deep,
How life and love are all a dream!
I joyless view thy rays adorn
10 The faintly-marked, distant hill;
I joyless view thy trembling horn
Reflected in the
