| WILD rose of Alloway! my thanks; | |
| Thou 'mindst me of that autumn noon | |
| When first we met upon "the banks | |
| And braes o' bonny Doon." | |
| |
| Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough, | 5 |
| My sunny hour was glad and brief, | |
| We 've crossed the winter sea, and thou | |
| Art withered—flower and leaf. | |
| |
| And will not thy death-doom be mine— | |
| The doom of all things wrought of clay— | 10 |
| And withered my life's leaf like thine, | |
| Wild rose of Alloway? | |
| |
| Not so his memory,—for whose sake | |
| My bosom bore thee far and long, | |
| His—who a humbler flower could make | 15 |
| Immortal as his song. | |
| |
| The memory of Burns—a name | |
| That calls, when brimmed her festal cup, | |
| A nation's glory and her shame, | |
| In silent sadness up. | 20 |
| |
| A nation's glory—be the rest | |
| Forgot—she 's canonized his mind; | |
| And it is joy to speak the best | |
| We may of human kind. | |
| |
| I 've stood beside the cottage-bed | 25 |
| Where the Bard-peasant first drew breath; | |
| A straw-thatched roof above his head, | |
| A straw-wrought couch beneath. | |
| |
| And I have stood beside the pile, | |
| His monument—that tells to Heaven | 30 |
| The homage of earth's proudest isle | |
| To that Bard-peasant given! | |
| |
| Bid thy thoughts hover o'er that spot, | |
| Boy-Minstrel, in thy dreaming hour; | |
| And know, however low his lot, | 35 |
| A Poet's pride and power: | |
| |
| The pride that lifted Burns from earth, | |
| The power that gave a child of song | |
| Ascendency o'er rank and birth, | |
| The rich, the brave, the strong; | 40 |
| |
| And if despondency weigh down | |
| Thy spirit's fluttering pinions then, | |
| Despair—thy name is written on | |
| The roll of common men. | |
| |
| There have been loftier themes than his, | 45 |
| And longer scrolls, and louder lyres, | |
| And lays lit up with Poesy's | |
| Purer and holier fires: | |
| |
| Yet read the names that know not death; | |
| Few nobler ones than Burns are there; | 50 |
| And few have won a greener wreath | |
| Than that which binds his hair. | |
| |
| His is that language of the heart, | |
| In which the answering heart would speak, | |
| Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, | 55 |
| Or the smile light the cheek; | |
| |
| And his that music, to whose tone | |
| The common pulse of man keeps time, | |
| In cot or castle's mirth or moan, | |
| In cold or sunny clime. | 60 |
| |
| And who hath heard his song, nor knelt | |
| Before its spell with willing knee, | |
| And listened, and believed, and felt | |
| The Poet's mastery | |
| |
| O'er the mind's sea, in calm and storm, | 65 |
| O'er the heart's sunshine and its showers, | |
| O'er Passion's moments bright and warm, | |
| O'er Reason's dark, cold hours; | |
| |
| On fields where brave men "die or do," | |
| In halls where rings the banquet's mirth, | 70 |
| Where mourners weep, where lovers woo, | |
| From throne to cottage-hearth? | |
| |
| What sweet tears dim the eye unshed, | |
| What wild vows falter on the tongue, | |
| When "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," | 75 |
| Or "Auld Lang Syne" is sung! | |
| |
| Pure hopes, that lift the soul above, | |
| Come with his Cotter's hymn of praise, | |
| And dreams of youth, and truth, and love, | |
| With "Logan's" banks and braes. | 80 |
| |
| And when he breathes his master-lay | |
| Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall, | |
| All passions in our frames of clay | |
| Come thronging at his call. | |
| |
| Imagination's world of air, | 85 |
| And our own world, its gloom and glee, | |
| Wit, pathos, poetry, are there, | |
| And death's sublimity. | |
| |
| And Burns—though brief the race he ran, | |
| Though rough and dark the path he trod, | 90 |
| Lived—died—in form and soul a Man, | |
| The image of his God. | |
| |
| Through care and pain, and want, and woe, | |
| With wounds that only death could heal, | |
| Tortures—the poor alone can know, | 95 |
| The proud alone can feel; | |
| |
| He kept his honesty and truth, | |
| His independent tongue and pen, | |
| And moved, in manhood as in youth, | |
| Pride of his fellow-men. | 100 |
| |
| Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong, | |
| A hate of tyrant and of knave, | |
| A love of right, a scorn of wrong, | |
| Of coward and of slave; | |
| |
| A kind, true heart, a spirit high, | 105 |
| That could not fear and would not bow, | |
| Were written in his manly eye | |
| And on his manly brow. | |
| |
| Praise to the bard! his words are driven, | |
| Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown, | 110 |
| Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven, | |
| The birds of fame have flown. | |
| |
| Praise to the man! a nation stood | |
| Beside his coffin with wet eyes, | |
| Her brave, her beautiful, her good, | 115 |
| As when a loved one dies. | |
| |
| And still, as on his funeral day, | |
| Men stand his cold earth-couch around, | |
| With the mute homage that we pay | |
| To consecrated ground. | 120 |
| |
| And consecrated ground it is, | |
| The last, the hallowed home of one | |
| Who lives upon all memories, | |
| Though with the buried gone. | |
| |
| Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines, | 125 |
| Shrines to no code or creed confined— | |
| The Delphian vales, the Palestines, | |
| The Meccas of the mind. | |
| |
| Sages, with wisdom's garland wreathed, | |
| Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power, | 130 |
| And warriors with their bright swords sheathed, | |
| The mightiest of the hour; | |
| |
| And lowlier names, whose humble home | |
| Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star, | |
| Are there—o'er wave and mountain come, | 135 |
| From countries near and far; | |
| |
| Pilgrims whose wandering feet have pressed | |
| The Switzer's snow, the Arab's sand, | |
| Or trod the piled leaves of the West, | |
| My own green forest-land. | 140 |
| |
| All ask the cottage of his birth, | |
| Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung, | |
| And gather feelings not of earth | |
| His fields and streams among. | |
| |
| They linger by the Doon's low trees, | 145 |
| And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr, | |
| And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries! | |
| The poet's tomb is there. | |
| |
| But what to them the sculptor's art, | |
| His funeral columns, wreaths and urns? | 150 |
| Wear they not graven on the heart | |
| The name of Robert Burns? | |
