If to the city sped - what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share;
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
To pamper luxury, and thin mankind;

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To see those joys the sons of pleasure know
Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe.
Here while the courtier glitters in brocade,
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade;
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display,
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.

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The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign
Here, richly deckt, admits the gorgeous train:
Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square,
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.
Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy!

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Sure these denote one universal joy!

Are these thy serious thoughts? — Ah, turn thine eyes

325

Where the poor houseless shivering female lies.

She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest,

Has wept at tales of innocence distrest;
Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,

Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn:

330

Now lost to all,— her friends, her virtue fled,

Near her betrayer's door she lays her head,

And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower,

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour

When idly first, ambitious of the town,

335

She left her wheel and robes of country brown.

Do thine, sweet Auburn,— thine, the loveliest train,

Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?

Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,

At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!

Ah, no! To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
Far different there from all that charm'd before,
The various terrors of that horrid shore;

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Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day;

Those matted woods, where birds forget to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;

350

Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around;
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men more murderous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravaged landschape with the skies.
Far different these from every former scene,
The cooling brook, the grassy vested green,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,

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That only sheltered thefts of harmless love.

That called them from their native walks away;

Good Heaven! what sorrows gloom'd that parting day,

When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,

365

Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last,

And took a long farewel, and wished in vain
For seats like these beyond the western main;
And shuddering still to face the distant deep,
Returned and wept, and still returned to weep.
The good old sire the first prepared to go

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To new found worlds, and wept for others' woe;
But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,
He only wished for worlds beyond the grave.

His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion of his helpless years,
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,
And left a lover's for a father's arms.
With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes,
And blest the cot where every pleasure rose,
And kist her thoughtless babes with many a tear,
And claspt them close, in sorrow doubly dear;
Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief
In all the silent manliness of grief.

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O luxury thou curst by Heaven's decree,

How ill exchanged are things like these for thee!

How do thy potions, with insidious joy,

Diffuse their pleasure only to destroy !

Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown,

Boast of a florid vigour not their own.

At every draught more large and large they grow,
A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe;
Till sapped their strength, and every part unsound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round.
Even now the devastation is begun,
And half the business of destruction done;

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Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.

Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail,
That idly waiting flaps with every gale,

400

Downward they move, a melancholy band,

Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.
Contented toil, and hospitable care,

And kind connubial tenderness, are there;
And piety with wishes placed above,
And steady loyalty, and faithful love.

And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid,
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ;
Unfit in these degenerate times of shame
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame;
Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried,
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe,

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That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so;

Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel,

415

Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well!
Farewell, and O! where'er thy voice be tried,
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side,
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigours of the inclement clime;

420

Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain;
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;
Teach him, that states of native strength possest,
Tho' very poor, may still be very blest;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

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ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)

The greatest poet of Scotland, the most original of the eighteenthcentury poets of Great Britain, one of the best song writers of the world, these are epithets not too extravagant to apply to Robert Burns. Born to a most humble life, a poor country ploughboy, without the advantages of education or of training in his art, he has nevertheless succeeded beyond all but a few in touching the heart of mankind. He was born to be the poet of lyrical passion, to sing the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, the loves and yearnings and ambitions of the homely human nature which he knew and so well understood. Except in one or two poems his aim is not action or dramatic intensity; and he displays little of the reflective quality and sustained imagination that also characterize the highest order of poets. He felt rather than thought; he sang rather than philosophized.

Tender and sympathetic toward all living things, he has a message for our hearts from the heart of Nature. Generous and impulsive, he carries us with him in his recital of experiences whether imaginary or real. And in Burns the experience is usually real. With a gay and lively humor he lends such zest to rural scenes, the Fair, the mirth of Hallowe'en, the pleasures of the village inn that, like his simple heroes, we live it all again. When once Burns had sung, no singer could be artificial and succeed. By the warmth of his lyrics he thawed "the eighteenth-century frost" of Pope and his followers. By his dialect poems he turned the broad, provincial Ayrshire into a national and literary tongue. Still, at the best, his was only a half life, with possibilities half realized. The early years were a struggle with harsh necessity; the later, a struggle with dissipation and despair. Had his will power been as strong as his passions were deep, and his life as pure as his ideals high, it is impossible to surmise how successful both in life and letters he might have been. For his nature was at bottom both sensitive and reverent; his religious feeling deep and sincere. Despite its blemishes and notwithstanding his own imperfections,

perhaps, after all because of the passion of them, - his poetry stands out honest, manly, and inspiring.

1759-1786. Burns was born in a small clay-built cottage on a little farm two miles south of the Scottish town of Ayr, and close to the old Alloway Kirk of his Tam o' Shanter. His father was an intelligent, God-fearing man, but very poor; and the lad's education was necessarily of the most fragmentary character. From his fourteenth to his twenty-fourth year, young Burns worked hard as the principal laborer on his father's farm. All this time, however, he was a great reader, devouring, among other things, the Spectator, Shakespeare, Pope, and the ballads of Scotland. These Scottish ballads seem early to have aroused a spirit of artistic emulation, and we soon hear of the young poet, as he guides his plough, fitting words of his own to ancient Scottish tunes. When about twenty-three years of age he went to a neighboring town to learn the trade of flax-dressing; and here were sown the seeds of the evil habits which did so much to ruin his later life. In 1784 his father died; and, with his brother, Robert rented a farm at Mossgiel, where many of his best poems were written, among others The Cotter's Saturday Night. But the farm proved a failure; and the poet, wearied with that kind of life, and harassed by the consequences of his youthful follies, laid plans for emigrating to the West Indies. Το secure money for the expenses of this voyage, he published, in 1786, a small volume of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. The result was entirely unexpected. Scotland was taken by storm; and the poet was induced to pay a visit to Edinburgh, where he became the literary and social lion of the day.

1786-1796. Burns spent a winter at Edinburgh, partly in the cultivated circles of that great literary centre; partly with rough and drunken companions at the taverns and social clubs of the city. With the proceeds of a second edition of his poems he took the lease of a farm at Ellisland in southern Scotland. Then he married Jean Armour, the most permanent of his many loves. This, the period in which Tam o' Shanter was written, was the happiest of his life; but it was a period of very brief duration. In 1789 he secured a position as exciseman, that is, inspector of liquors and other goods liable to an internal revenue tax. His habits of intemperance were now becoming constantly worse, and from the day, in 1791, when he finally abandoned his farm for a residence in the neighboring town of Dumfries, his downfall was rapid. It is true that during periods of remorse and temporary reform he still continued to write immortal songs; but his health had been shattered, and his spirits were broken. At last, in July, 1796, when only thirty-seven years old, the poet died.