night the storm the steeples rocked,Poor labour sweet in sleep was locked,
While burns, wi’ snawy wreeths up-choked,
Wild-eddying swirl.
Or through the mining outlet bocked,
Down headlong hurl.
Listening, the doors an’ winnocks rattle,
I thought me on the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O’ winter war,
And through the drift, deep-lairing sprattle
Beneath a scar.
Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing,
That, in the merry months o’ spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o’ thee?
Whare wilt thou cower thy chittering wing,
An’ close thy e’e?
Ev’n you on murd’ring errands toil’d,
Lone from your savage homes exiled,
The blood-stained roost, and sheep-cote spoiled
My heart forgets,
While pitiless the tempest wild
Sore on you beats.
Now Phoebe, in her midnight reign,
Dark muffled, viewed the dreary plain;
Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train,
Rose in my soul,
When on my ear this plaintive strain
Slow, solemn, stole:—
“Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!
And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost:
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!
Not all your rage, as now united, shows
More hard unkindness, unrelenting,
Vengeful malice unrepenting,
Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows;
See stern oppression’s iron grip,
Or mad ambition’s gory hand,
Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip,
Woe, want, and murder o’er a land!
Even in the peaceful rural vale,
Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale,
How pamper’d luxury, flattery by her side,
The parasite empoisoning her ear.
With all the servile wretches in the rear,
Looks o’er proud property, extended wide;
And eyes the simple rustic hind,
Whose toil upholds the glittering show,
A creature of another kind,
Some coarser substance, unrefin’d,
Placed for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, below.
Where, where is love’s fond, tender throe, With lordly honour’s lofty brow, The powers you proudly own? Is there, beneath love’s noble name, Can harbour, dark, the selfish aim, To bless himself alone! Mark maiden innocence a prey To love-pretending snares, This boasted honour turns away, Shunning soft pity’s rising sway, Regardless of the tears and unavailing prayers! Perhaps this hour, in misery’s squalid nest, She strains your infant to her joyless breast, And with a mother’s fears shrinks at the rocking blast! Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down, Feel not a want but what yourselves create, Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate, Whom friends and fortune quite disown! Ill satisfied keen nature’s clamorous call, Stretched on his straw he lays himself to sleep, While through the ragged roof and chinky wall, Chill o’er his slumbers piles the drifty heap! Think on the dungeon’s grim confine, Where guilt and poor misfortune pine! Guilt, erring man, relenting view! But shall thy legal rage pursue The wretch, already crushed low By cruel fortune’s undeserved blow? Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress, A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss!”
I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer
Shook off the pouthery snaw,
And hailed the morning with a cheer—
A cottage-rousing craw!
But deep this truth impressed my mind—
Through all his works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.
XIII.
REMORSE.
A FRAGMENT.
[“I entirely agree,” says Burns, “with the author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Remorse is the most painful sentiment that can embitter the human bosom; an ordinary pitch of fortitude may bear up admirably well, under those calamities, in the procurement of which we ourselves have had no hand; but when our follies or crimes have made us wretched, to bear all with manly firmness, and at the same time have a proper penitential sense of our misconduct, is a glorious effort of self-command.”]
Of all the numerous ills that hurt our peace,
That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish,
Beyond comparison the worst are those
That to our folly or our guilt we owe.
In every other circumstance, the mind
Has this to say, ‘It was no deed of mine;’
But when to all the evil of misfortune
This sting is added—‘Blame thy foolish self!’
Or worser far, the pangs of keen remorse;
The torturing, gnawing consciousness of guilt—
