The Canongate Burns. Robert Burns

meet with, and greet with

      140 My DAVIE or my JEAN!

      O, how that Name inspires my style!

      The words come skelpin’ rank an’ file, rattling/running

      Amaist before I ken! almost, know

      The ready measure rins as fine, runs

      145 As Phoebus and the famous Nine

      Were glowran owre my pen. looking over

      My spavet Pegasus will limp, lame, leg joint problems

      Till ance he’s fairly het; once, hot

      And then he’ll hilch, an’ stilt, an’ jimp, hobble, limp, jump

      150 And rin an unco fit; run, rapid pace

      But least then, the beast then

      Should rue this hasty ride,

      I’ll light now, and dight now wipe clean

      His sweaty, wizen’d hide. withered

      David Sillar (1760–1830) was one of several recipients of Burns’s Ayrshire epistolary poetry whom the Bard certainly overestimated poetically if not personally. Sillar had a mixed career as failed teacher then grocer but eventually inherited the family farm, Spittleside, Tarbolton and died a rich Irvine magistrate. This is the very reverse of the life of shared deprivation outlined for him and Burns himself in this poem. A good fiddler and composer (he composed the music to Burns’s The Rosebud), he published his less than mediocre Poems at Kilmarnock in 1789. His proximity to Burns can be gauged by ll. 114– 17 where, as in Sterne, rugged, biological reality constantly pene-trates the surface of fine feeling. The poem is a technically formidable example of Burns’s employment of Alexander Montgomerie’s The Cherry and the Slae measure which James VI defined as one example of ‘cuttit and broken verse, quhairof new formes daylie inuentit’ (Poems, STS, l. 82). Burns is, however, hardly ever given to technique for its own sake. As Daiches has remarked (p. 163), the poem is remarkable for its ability to mould the process of thought to such complex form. However, the nature of this thought itself is more questionable. The exposed multiple, tangible distresses of penury are expressed with extraordinary power throughout the poem as is the sense of chronic injustice between rich and poor. The compensations of poverty are less credible. Edwin Muir was particularly unhappy with ‘The heart ay’s the part ay, /That makes us right or wrang.’ Nor do the notions of compensatory and sexual harmony ring wholly true. Daiches in discussing stanza three, with its extraordinary initial delineation of the life of the beggars, defends the poem against such a sense of disparity between the desperate life it presents and the possible compensation for such a life thus:

      Here the poet is not posturing for the benefit of the Edinburgh gentry, but letting the poem work itself easily into a lively expression of careless, cheerful view of life. The theme is a mood rather than a philosophy, a mood of defiance of the rich and happy acceptance of easygoing poverty. To seek for profundity of ethical thought here would be to miss the point of the poem, which seeks to capture a transitory state of mind rather than to state general principles (p. 163).

      Arguably, rather than refuting it, this repeats the poem’s own inadequacy. Daiches, however, also considers that, after stanza seven, the poem falters badly. ‘Tenebrific’ (l. 138) is the poet’s neologism and not, certainly, the happiest of touches. The irresistible, Pegasian flood of language in the last stanza is a quite remarkable self-analysis of Burns in the grip of creativity.

1 Ramsay, R.B.

       The Lament

      Occasioned by the Unfortunate Issue of a Friend’s Amour

      First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

       Alas! how oft does Goodness wound itself,

       And sweet Affection prove the spring of Woe!

      HOME.

      O thou pale Orb, that silent shines

      While care-untroubled mortals sleep!

      Thou seest a wretch who inly pines,

      And wanders here to wail and weep!

      5 With Woe I nightly vigils keep,

      Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam;

      And mourn, in lamentation deep,

      How life and love are all a dream!

      I joyless view thy rays adorn

      10 The faintly-marked, distant hill;

      I joyless view thy trembling horn

      Reflected in the gurgling rill.

      My fondly-fluttering heart, be still!

      Thou busy pow’r, Remembrance, cease!

      15 Ah! must the agonizing thrill

      For ever bar returning Peace?

      No idly-feign’d, poetic pains

      My sad, lovelorn lamentings claim:

      No shepherd’s pipe — Arcadian strains;

      20 No fabled tortures quaint and tame.

      The plighted faith, the mutual flame,

      The oft-attested Pow’rs above,

      The promis’d Father’s tender name,

      These were the pledges of my love!

      25 Encircled in her clasping arms,

      How have the raptur’d moments flown!

      How have I wished for Fortune’s charms,

      For her dear sake, and her’s alone!

      And, must I think it! is she gone,

      30 My secret heart’s exulting boast?

      And does she heedless hear my groan?

      And is she ever, ever lost?

      Oh! can she bear so base a heart,

      So lost to Honour, lost to Truth,

      35 As from the fondest lover part,

      The plighted husband of her youth?

      Alas! Life’s path may be unsmooth!

      Her way may lie thro’ rough distress!

      Then, who her pangs and pains will soothe,

      40 Her sorrows share, and make them less?

      Ye winged Hours that o’er us past,

      Enraptur’d more the more enjoy’d,

      Your dear remembrance in my breast

      My fondly treasur’d thoughts employ’d.

      45 That breast, how dreary now, and void,

      For her too scanty once of room!

      Ev’n ev’ry ray of Hope destroy’d,

      And not a Wish to gild the gloom!

      The morn, that warns th’ approaching day,

      50 Awakes me up to toil and woe;

      I see the hours in long array,

      That I must suffer, lingering slow:

      Full many a pang, and many a throe,

      Keen Recollection’s direful train,

      55 Must wring my soul, ere Phoebus, low,

      Shall kiss the distant western main.

      And when my nightly