be still!
Thou busy pow’r, Remembrance, cease!
15 Ah! must the agonizing thrill
For ever bar returning Peace?
No idly-feign’d, poetic pains
My sad, lovelorn lamentings claim:
No shepherd’s pipe — Arcadian strains;
20 No fabled tortures quaint and tame.
The plighted faith, the mutual flame,
The oft-attested Pow’rs above,
The promis’d Father’s tender name,
These were the pledges of my love!
25 Encircled in her clasping arms,
How have the raptur’d moments flown!
How have I wished for Fortune’s charms,
For her dear sake, and her’s alone!
And, must I think it! is she gone,
30 My secret heart’s exulting boast?
And does she heedless hear my groan?
And is she ever, ever lost?
Oh! can she bear so base a heart,
So lost to Honour, lost to Truth,
35 As from the fondest lover part,
The plighted husband of her youth?
Alas! Life’s path may be unsmooth!
Her way may lie thro’ rough distress!
Then, who her pangs and pains will soothe,
40 Her sorrows share, and make them less?
Ye winged Hours that o’er us past,
Enraptur’d more the more enjoy’d,
Your dear remembrance in my breast
My fondly treasur’d thoughts employ’d.
45 That breast, how dreary now, and void,
For her too scanty once of room!
Ev’n ev’ry ray of Hope destroy’d,
And not a Wish to gild the gloom!
The morn, that warns th’ approaching day,
50 Awakes me up to toil and woe;
I see the hours in long array,
That I must suffer, lingering slow:
Full many a pang, and many a throe,
Keen Recollection’s direful train,
55 Must wring my soul, ere Phoebus, low,
Shall kiss the distant western main.
And when my nightly couch I try,
Sore-harass’d out, with care and grief,
My toil-beat nerves and tear-worn eye
60 Keep watchings with the nightly thief:
Or, if I slumber, Fancy, chief,
Reigns, haggard-wild, in sore affright:
Ev’n day, all-bitter, brings relief
From such a horror-breathing night.
65 O! thou bright Queen, who, o’er th’ expanse
Now highest reign’st, with boundless sway!
Oft has thy silent-marking glance
Observ’d us, fondly-wand’ring, stray!
The time, unheeded, sped away,
70 While Love’s luxurious pulse beat high,
Beneath thy silver-gleaming ray,
To mark the mutual-kindling eye.
Oh! scenes in strong remembrance set!
Scenes, never, never to return!
75 Scenes if in stupor I forget,
Again I feel, again I burn!
From ev’ry joy and pleasure torn,
Life’s weary vale I wander thro’;
And hopeless, comfortless, I’ll mourn
80 A faithless woman’s broken vow!
Written in the rhyming format of Ramsay’s Ever-Green, this expresses the poet’s deep anguish at the forced break-up of his relationship with Jean Armour. He informed Dr Moore, after causing a stir among the Ayrshire clergy by circulating a copy of Holy Willie’s Prayer, that:
Unluckily for me, my idle wanderings led me, on another side, point-blank within the reach of their heaviest metal. – This is the unfortunate story alluded to in my printed poem, The Lament.’ Twas a shocking affair, which I cannot bear yet to recollect; and had very nearly given [me] one or two of the principal qualifications for a place among those who have lost the chart and mistake the reckoning of Rationality. – I gave up my part of the farm to my brother … (Letter 125)
Burns told Mrs Dunlop of his vexation at Jean being taken away by her family and their ‘detestation of my guilt of being a poor devil, not only forbade me her company & their house, but on my rumoured West Indian voyage, got a warrant to incarcerate me in jail till I should find security in my about-to-be Paternal relation’ (Letter 254). The closing line would suggest that Burns blamed Jean Armour as ‘faithless’ to him, although she was as much the victim of her parents’ extreme action as Burns.
Kinsley notes two minor influences from Blair’s poem The Grave and Goldsmith’s popular The Deserted Village (Vol. III, no. 93, p. 1174). The poem could easily be mistaken for an early work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, given lines such as ‘… I nightly vigils keep,/ Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam; /And mourn, in lamentation deep, /How life and love are all a dream!’ It is an arguably underrated English poem.
Despondency: An Ode
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Oppress’d with grief, oppress’d with care,
A burden more than I can bear,
I
