C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Burns
By John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
N
To Scottish maid and lover:
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of, live together.
The moorland flower and peasant!
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!
And purple of adorning,
And manhood’s noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood’s morning,—
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure.
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
The locust in the haying;
And like the fabled hunter’s horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
I sought the maple’s shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
I heard the squirrels leaping,
The good dog listened while I read,
And wagged his tail in keeping.
I read ‘The Twa Dogs’’ story,
And half believed he understood
The poet’s allegory.
Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
Of fact and feeling better
Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor:
The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender idyls of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.
Of loving knight and lady,
When farmer boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already?
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.
The sweet-brier and the clover;
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
Their wood-hymns chanting over.
I saw the Man uprising;
No longer common or unclean,
The child of God’s baptizing!
Of life among the lowly;
The Bible at his Cotter’s hearth
Had made my own more holy.
To lawless love appealing,
Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling,
No inward answer gaining:
No heart had I to see or hear
The discord and the staining.
His worth, in vain bewailings;
Sweet Soul of Song!—I own my debt
Uncanceled by his failings!
Which tells his lapse from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones of beauty;
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven.
Eternal echoes render,—
The mournful Tuscan’s haunted rhyme,
And Milton’s starry splendor!
To Nature’s bosom nearer?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
To love a tribute dearer?
The human feeling gushes!
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes!
So ‘Bonnie Doon’ but tarry;
Blot out the Epic’s stately rhyme,
But spare his Highland Mary!