Delphi Complete Works of Robert Burns (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) (175 page)

When Burns had earned five hundred pounds by the sale of the Edinburgh edition of his poems, he decided ‘that he had the responsibility for the temporal and possibly the eternal welfare of a dearly loved fellow-creature;’ so again giving proof of his honest manhood and recognising his plain duty, he married Jean Armour a second time, in the home of his dear friend Gavin Hamilton. Of the first three women whom he loved one refused him, one died after their sacred engagement, and the third he married twice. The fourth and last woman that he loved could not marry.

Any one of the first three would have made him a good wife, but no one could have been more considerate or more faithful than the one he married.

Could any reasonable man believe that if Burns had really loved other women, as he loved Alison Begbie, Jean Armour, Mary Campbell, and Mrs M’Lehose, the names of the other women would not have been known by the world? He never tried to hide his love. He wrote songs of love with other names attached to them, used for variety. In a letter to a friend he regretted the use of ‘Chloris’ in several of his Ellisland and Dumfries poems, and to her directly he said they were ‘fictitious’ or assumed expressions of love. Notwithstanding the foolish or malicious statements that Burns had many lovers, he had but four real loves. One would have been his limit if the first had accepted him and lived as long as he did.

It has been said that ‘the love of Burns was the love of the flesh.’ It is worth while to examine the love-songs of Burns to learn what elements of thought and feeling dominated his mind and heart. He wrote two hundred and fifty love-songs, and only three or four contain indelicate references; even these were not considered improper in his time.

What were the themes of his love-songs? What were the symbols that he used to typify love? There is no beauty or delight in Nature on earth or sky that he did not use as a symbol of true love. He saw God through Nature as few men ever saw Him, and he therefore naturally used the beauty and sweetness and glory of Nature to help to reveal the beauty and sweetness and glory of love, the element of the Divine that thrilled him with the deepest joy and the highest reverence.

In his first poem, written when he was fifteen, describing his fourteen-year-old sweetheart, he says:

A bonnie lass, I will confess,
Is pleasant to the e’e;
But without some better qualities,
She’s no a lass for me.
······
But it’s innocence and modesty
That polishes the dart.

‘Tis this in Nelly pleases me,
‘Tis this enchants my soul;
For absolutely in my breast
She reigns without control.

Of Peggy Thomson, his second love, he wrote:

Not vernal showers to budding flowers,
Not autumn to the farmer,
So dear can be as thou to me,
My fair, my lovely charmer.

Of Alison Begbie he wrote in ‘The Lass o’ Cessnock Banks’:

But it’s not her air, her form, her face,
Tho’ matching beauty’s fabled queen;
‘Tis the mind that shines in ev’ry grace,
And chiefly in her rogueish een.

In ‘Young Peggy Blooms’ he describes her:

Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,
Her blush is like the morning,
The rosy dawn, the springing grass
With early gems adorning.
Her eyes outshine the radiant beams
That gild the passing shower,
And glitter o’er the crystal streams,
And cheer each fresh’ning flower.

In ‘Will Ye Go to the Indies, My Mary?’ he says:

O sweet grows the lime and the orange,
And the apple o’ the pine;
But a’ the charms o’ the Indies
Can never equal thine.

The following are emblems of beauty in the ‘Lass o’ Ballochmyle’:

On every blade the pearls hang.

Her look was like the morning’s eye,
Her air like Nature’s vernal smile.

Fair is the morn in flowery May,
And sweet is night in autumn mild.

Describing ‘My Nannie O’ he says:

Her face is fair, her heart is true;
As spotless as she’s bonnie, O;
The opening gowan, wat wi’ dew, daisy
Nae purer is than Nannie O.

In ‘The Birks [birches] of Aberfeldy’ he speaks to his lover of ‘Summer blinking on flowery braes’ and ‘Playing o’er the crystal streamlets;’ and the ‘Blythe singing o’ the little birdies’ and ‘The braes o’erhung wi’ fragrant woods’ and ‘The hoary cliffs crowned wi’ flowers;’ and ‘The streamlet pouring over a waterfall.’ Love and Nature were united in his heart.

In ‘Blythe was She’ he describes the lady by saying she was like beautiful things:

Her looks were like a flower in May.

Her smile was like a simmer morn;

Her bonnie face it was as meek
As any lamb upon a lea;

and the ‘ev’ning sun.’

Her step was

As light’s a bird upon a thorn.

He wrote ‘O’ a’ the Airts the Wind can Blaw’ about Jean Armour after they were married, while he was building their home on Ellisland. He says in this exquisite song:

By day and night my fancy’s flight
Is ever wi’ my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair;
I hear her in the tunefu’ birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There’s not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green;  woodland
There’s not a bonnie bird that sings,
But minds me o’ my Jean.

To Jean he wrote again:

It is na, Jean, thy bonnie face,
Nor shape that I admire;
Although thy beauty and thy grace
Might weel awake desire.
Something in ilka part o’ thee
To praise, to love, I find;
But dear as is thy form to me,
Still dearer is thy mind.

In ‘Delia — an Ode,’ he uses the ‘fair face of orient day,’ and ‘the tints of the opening rose’ to suggest her beauty, and ‘the lark’s wild warbled lay’ and the ‘sweet sound of the tinkling rill’ to suggest the sweetness of her voice.

In ‘I Gaed a Waefu’ Gate Yestreen’ he says:

She talked, she smiled, my heart she wiled;
She charmed my
soul
, I wist na how.

It was the soul of Burns that responded to love. Neither Alison Begbie nor Mary Campbell excelled in beauty, and no one acquainted with their high character could have had the temerity to suggest that love for them was ‘the love of the flesh.’ His beautiful poems to Jean Armour place his love for her on a high plane. He was a man of strong passion, but passion was not the source of his love.

In ‘Aye sae Bonnie, Blythe and Gay’ he says:

She’s aye sae neat, sae trim, sae light, the graces round her hover,
Ae look deprived me o’ my heart, and I became her lover

‘Ilka bird sang o’ its love’ he makes Miss Kennedy say in ‘The Banks o’ Doon.’ As the birds ever sang love to Burns, he naturally makes them sing love to all hearts.

In ‘The Bonnie Wee Thing’ he gives high qualifications for love kindling:

Wit, and grace, and love, and beauty
In ae constellation shine;
To adore thee is my duty,
Goddess o’ this soul o’ mine.

In ‘The Charms of Lovely Davies’ he says:

Each eye it cheers when she appears,
Like Phœbus in the morning,
When past the shower, and ev’ry flower
The garden is adorning.

The last three poems from which quotations have been made were written about two ladies whose lovers had been untrue to them: the first about Miss Kennedy, a member of one of the leading Ayrshire families; the other two about Miss Davies, a relative of the Glenriddell family.

In a letter to Miss Davies he said:

‘Woman is the blood-royal of life; let there be slight degrees of precedency among them, but let them all be sacred. Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original component feature of my mind.’

Burns was not in love with either Miss Kennedy or Miss Davies, but he explains the writing of the songs to Miss Davies, in a letter enclosing ‘Bonnie Wee Thing,’ by saying, ‘When I meet a person of my own heart I positively can no more desist from rhyming on impulse than an Æolian harp can refuse its tones to the streaming air.’

One of his most beautiful poems is ‘The Posie,’ which he planned to pull for his ‘Ain dear May.’

The primrose I will pu’, the firstling o’ the year,
And I will pu’ the pink, the emblem o’ my dear,
For she’s the pink o’ womankind, and blooms without a peer.

I’ll pu’ the budding rose, when Phœbus peeps in view,
For it’s like a baumy kiss o’ her sweet, bonnie mou’;
The hyacinth’s for constancy, wi’ its unchanging blue.

The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair,
And in her lovely bosom I’ll place the lily there;
The daisy’s for simplicity and unaffected air.

The woodbine I will pu’, when the e’ening star is near,
And the diamond draps o’ dew shall be her een sae clear;
The violet’s for modesty, which weel she fa’s to wear.

I’ll tie the posie round wi’ the silken band o’ luve,
And I’ll place it in her breast, and I’ll swear by a’ above
That to my latest draught o’ life the band shall ne’er remove,
And this will be a posie to my ain dear May.

In ‘Lovely Polly Stewart’ he says:

O lovely Polly Stewart,
O charming Polly Stewart,
There’s ne’er a flower that blooms in May
That’s half so fair as thou art.

The flower it blaws, it fades, it fa’s,
And art can ne’er renew it;
But worth and truth, eternal youth
Will gie to Polly Stewart.

In ‘Thou Fair Eliza’ he says:

Not the bee upon the blossom,
In the pride o’ sinny noon;
Not the little sporting fairy,
All beneath the simmer moon;
Not the minstrel, in the moment
Fancy lightens in his e’e,
Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,
That thy presence gies to me.

In ‘My Bonie Bell’ he writes:

The smiling spring comes in rejoicing,
The surly winter grimly flies;
Now crystal clear are the falling waters,
And bonie blue are the sunny skies.
Fresh o’er the mountains breaks forth the morning,
The evening gilds the ocean’s swell;
All creatures joy in the sun’s returning,
And I rejoice in my Bonie Bell.

‘Sweet Afton’ was suggested by the following: ‘I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not, nor awaken my love — my dove, my undefiled! The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.’

In descriptive power and in fond and reverent love no poem of Burns, or any other writer, surpasses Sweet Afton. Authorities have been divided in regard to the person who was the Mary of Sweet Afton. Currie and Lockhart declined to accept the statement of Gilbert Burns that it was Highland Mary. Chambers and Douglas, the most illuminating and reliable of the early biographers of Burns, agree with Gilbert. One of Mrs Dunlop’s daughters stated that she heard Burns himself say that Mary Campbell was the woman whose name he used to represent the lover for whom he asked such reverent consideration. He had no lover at any period of his life on the Afton. He had but one lover named Mary, and she stirred him to a degree of reverence that toned the music of his love to the end of his life. Mary Campbell was alive to Burns in a truly realistic sense when he wrote the sacred poem ‘Sweet Afton.’

In ‘O were my Love yon Lilac Fair’ he assumes that his love might be

A lilac fair,
Wi’ purpling blossoms in the spring,
And I a bird to shelter there,
When wearied on my little wing.

In the second verse he says:

O gin my love were yon red rose if
That grows upon the castle wa’;
And I mysel’ a drop o’ dew,
Into her bonie breast to fa’!

Could imagination kindle more pure ideals to reveal love than these? In ‘Bonie Jean — A Ballad’ he gives two delightful pictures of love:

As in the bosom of the stream
The moonbeam dwells at dewy e’en;
So trembling, pure, was tender love
Within the breast of Bonie Jean.
······
The sun was sinking in the west,
The birds sang sweet in ilka grove; every
His cheek to hers he fondly laid,
And whispered thus his tale of love.

In ‘Phillis the Fair’ he writes:

While larks, with little wing, fann’d the pure air,
Tasting the breathing spring, forth did I fare;
Gay the sun’s golden eye
Peep’d o’er the mountains high;
Such thy morn! did I cry, Phillis the fair.

In each bird’s careless song glad did I share;
While yon wild-flow’rs among, chance led me there!
Sweet to the op’ning day,
Rosebuds bent the dewy spray;
Such thy bloom! did I say, Phillis the fair.

In ‘By Allan Stream’ he describes the glories of Nature, but gives them second place to the joys of love:

The haunt o’ spring’s the primrose-brae,
The summer joys the flocks to follow;
How cheery thro’ her short’ning day
Is autumn in her weeds o’ yellow;
But can they melt the glowing heart,
Or chain the soul in speechless pleasure?
Or thro’ each nerve the rapture dart,
Like meeting her, our bosom’s treasure?