1. A Day With Burns
There are few figures which appeal more picturesquely to the imagination than that of the ploughman-poet--swarthy, stalwart, black-eyed,--striding along the furrow in the grey of a dreary dawn. Yet Burns was far from being a mere uncultured peasant, nor did he come of peasant stock. His forefathers were small yeoman farmers, who had risked themselves in the cause of the Young Pretender: they had a certain amount of family pride and family tradition. Robert Burns had been educated in small schools, by various tutors, and by his father, a man of considerable attainments. He had acquired some French and Latin, studied mensuration, and acquainted himself with a good deal of poetry and many theological and philosophical books.
Man on Horseback Leaving FarmPainting by E. W. Haslehust.
THE HOME OF BURNS.
The man in hodden grey and rough top boots who
might be seen going out on dusky mornings from
his little farmstead of Ellisland near Dumfries.
So that the man who may be seen going out this dusky morning from his little farmstead of Ellisland near Dumfries--the dark and taciturn man in hodden grey and rough top boots--is not precisely a son of the soil. He is a hard worker in the field by dint of necessity, but his strenuous and impetuous mind is set upon other thoughts than the plough, as he drives his share along the Nithsdale uplands. It is exactly the season of the year that he delights in. "There is scarcely any earthly object," he has written, "which gives me more--I do not know if I should call it pleasure, but something that exalts me, something that enraptures me--than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation on a cloudy winter's day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, or raving over the plains.... I take a peculiar pleasure in the season of winter, more than the rest of the year.... There is something that raises the mind to a serious sublimity, favourable to everything great and noble." And there is also something secretly akin to the poet's wild and passionate soul. For this is not a happy man, but an embittered one, and ready to "rail on Lady Fortune in good set terms." He takes the storm-wind for an interpreter:
'The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,'
The joyless winter day,
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!
Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest; they must be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want--O do Thou grant
This one request of mine!--
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.
His brief meteoric reign of popularity in Edinburgh is now at an end: from being a popular idol of society, caressed and fêted, he has been let to sink back into his native obscurity. And, being poignantly proud, he suffers accordingly. The consciousness of genius burns within him, a flame that devours rather than illumines: and he finds vent for his bitterness, as he treads the clogging fallow, in the immortal lines: A Man's a Man for a' that.
Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward-slave--we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A Man's a Man for a' that,
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their tinsel show an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that;
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Gude faith, he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that),
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an' a' that,
For a' that, an' a' that;
It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
Presently, however, the sweet influences of the clear air, the pleasant smell of upturned earth, the wholesome sight and sounds of morning, soothe the poet's rugged spirit: he becomes attuned to the calmer present, and forgetful of the feverish past. Burns has never been given to depicting the shows and forms of nature for their own sake: he only uses them as a stage for the setting of a central human interest. In short, he "cares little," it has been said, "for the natural picturesqueness in itself: the moral picturesqueness touches him more nearly." And all sentient life is dear to him--not human life alone. Hence, one sees him wince and shrink, as his ploughshare destroys the daisy.