Robert Burns - The Complete Works

I.
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!
With woe I nightly vigils keep,
Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam,
And mourn, in lamentation deep,
How life and love are all a dream.
II.
A joyless view thy rays adorn
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!
Ah! must the agonizing thrill
For ever bar returning peace!
III.
No idly-feign’d poetic pains,
My sad, love-lorn lamentings claim;
No shepherd’s pipe—Arcadian strains;
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!
IV.
Encircled in her clasping arms,
How have the raptur’d moments flown!
How have I wish’d for fortune’s charms,
For her dear sake, and hers alone!
And must I think it!—is she gone,
My secret heart’s exulting boast?
And does she heedless hear my groan?
And is she ever, ever lost?
V.
Oh! can she bear so base a heart,
So lost to honour, lost to truth,
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,
Her sorrows share, and make them less?
VI.
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,
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!
VII.
The morn that warns th’ approaching day,
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,
Must wring my soul, ere Phœbus, low,
Shall kiss the distant, western main.
VIII.
And when my nightly couch I try,
Sore-harass’d out with care and grief,
My toil-beat nerves, and tear-worn eye,
Keep watchings with the nightly thief:
Or if I slumber, fancy, chief,
Reigns haggard-wild, in sore affright:
Ev’n day, all-bitter, brings relief,
From such a horror-breathing night.
IX.
O! thou bright queen, who o’er th’ expanse
Now highest reign’st, with boundless sway!
Oft has thy silent-marking glance
Observ’d us, fondly-wand’ring, stray!
The time, unheeded, sped away,
While love’s luxurious pulse beat high,
Beneath thy silver-gleaming ray,
To mark the mutual kindling eye.
X.
Oh! scenes in strong remembrance set!
Scenes never, never to return!
Scenes, if in stupor I forget,
Again I feel, again I burn!
From ev’ry joy and pleasure torn,
Life’s weary vale I’ll wander thro’;
And hopeless, comfortless, I’ll mourn

A faithless woman’s broken vow.

I.
Oppress’d with grief, oppress’d with care,
A burden more than I can bear,
I set me down and sigh:
O life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I!
Dim-backward as I cast my view,
What sick’ning scenes appear!
What sorrows yet may pierce me thro’
Too justly I may fear!
Still caring, despairing,
Must be my bitter doom;
My woes here shall close ne’er
But with the closing tomb!
II.
Happy, ye sons of busy life,
Who, equal to the bustling strife,
No other view regard!
Ev’n when the wished end’s deny’d,
Yet while the busy means are ply’d,
They bring their own reward:
Whilst I, a hope-abandon’d wight,
Unfitted with an aim,
Meet ev’ry sad returning night
And joyless morn the same;
You, bustling, and justling,
Forget each grief and pain;
I, listless, yet restless,
Find every prospect vain.
III.
How blest the solitary’s lot,
Who, all-forgetting, all forgot,
Within his humble cell,
The cavern wild with tangling roots,
Sits o’er his newly-gather’d fruits,
Beside his crystal well!
Or, haply, to his ev’ning thought,
By unfrequented stream,
The ways of men are distant brought,
A faint collected dream;
While praising, and raising
His thoughts to heav’n on high,
As wand’ring, meand’ring,
He views the solemn sky.
IV.
Than I, no lonely hermit plac’d
Where never human footstep trac’d,
Less fit to play the part;
The lucky moment to improve,
And just to stop, and just to move,
With self-respecting art:
But, ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys,
Which I too keenly taste,
The solitary can despise,
Can want, and yet be blest!
He needs not, he heeds not,
Or human love or hate,
Whilst I here, must cry here
At perfidy ingrate!
V.
Oh! enviable, early days,
When dancing thoughtless pleasure’s maze,
To care, to guilt unknown!
How ill exchang’d for riper times,
To feel the follies, or the crimes,
Of others, or my own!
Ye tiny elves that guiltless sport,
Like linnets in the bush,
Ye little know the ills ye court,
When manhood is your wish!
The losses, the crosses,
That active man engage!
The fears all, the tears all,
Of dim declining age!

I.
My lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end:
My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene;
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his work unknown, far happier there, I ween!
II.
November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh;
The short’ning winter-day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh:
The black’ning trains o’ craws to their repose:
The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o’er the moor, his course does homeward bend.
III.
At length his lonely cot appears in view,
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;
Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin’, stacher thro’
To meet their Dad, wi’ flichterin’ noise an’ glee.
His wee bit ingle, blinkin’ bonnily.
His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie Wifie’s smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
Does a’ his weary kiaugh and care beguile,
An’ makes him quite forget his labour and his toil.
IV.
Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in,
At service out amang the farmers roun’:
Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin
A cannie errand to a neebor town:
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown,
In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e,
Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new gown,
Or deposite her sair won penny-fee,
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.
V.
With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet,
An’ each for other’s welfare kindly spiers:
The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d, fleet;
Each tells the unco’s that he sees or hears;
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;
Anticipation forward points the view.
The Mother, wi’ her needle an’ her shears,
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new;
The Father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.
VI.
Their master’s an’ their mistress’s command,
The younkers a’ are warned to obey;
And mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand,
An’ ne’er, tho’ out of sight, to jauk or play:
“And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway!
And mind your duty, duly, morn and night!
Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,
Implore His counsel and assisting might:
They never sought in vain, that sought the Lord aright!”
VII.
But, hark! a rap comes gently to the door;
Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same,
Tells how a neebor lad cam o’er the moor,
To do some errands, and convoy her hame.
The wily Mother sees the conscious flame
Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek,
With heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name,
While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;
Weel pleas’d the Mother hears it’s nae wild, worthless rake.
VIII.
Wi’ kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben;
A strappan youth; he taks the Mother’s eye;
Blythe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill ta’en;
The Father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.
The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy,
But blate, an laithfu’, scarce can weel behave;
The Mother, wi’ a woman’s wiles, can spy
What makes the youth sae bashfu’ and sae grave;
Weel pleas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave.
IX.
O happy love! Where love like this is found!
O heart-felt raptures!—bliss beyond compare!
I’ve paced much this weary, mortal round,
And sage experience bids me this declare—
“If heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
One cordial in this melancholy vale,
’Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
In other’s arms, breathe out the tender tale,
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev’ning gale.”
X.
Is there, in human form, that bears a heart—
A wretch! a villain! lost to love and truth!
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art,
Betray sweet Jenny’s unsuspecting youth?
Curse on his perjur’d arts! dissembling smooth!
Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil’d?
Is there no pity, no relenting ruth,
Points to the parents fondling o’er their child?
Then paints the ruin’d maid, and their distraction wild?
XI.
But now the supper crowns their simple board,
The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia’s food:
The soupe their only hawkie does afford,
That ‘yont the hallan snugly chows her cood:
The dame brings forth in complimental mood,
To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck, fell,
An’ aft he’s prest, an’ aft he ca’s it guid;
The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell,
How ’twas a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’ the bell.
XII.
The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The Sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace,
The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride;
His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearing thin an’ bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And ‘Let us worship God!’ he says, with solemn air.
XIII.
They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:
Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;
Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays:
Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickl’d ear no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator’s praise.
XIV.
The priest-like Father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;
Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.
XV.
Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay his head:
How His first followers and servants sped,
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
How he who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand;
And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounc’d by Heaven’s command.
XVI.
Then kneeling down, to Heaven’s eternal King,
The Saint, the Father, and the Husband prays:
Hope ‘springs exulting on triumphant wing,’ [52] Pope.
That thus they all shall meet in future days:
There ever bask in uncreated rays,
No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator’s praise,
In such society, yet still more dear:
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.
XVII.
Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s pride,
In all the pomp of method and of art,
When men display to congregations wide,
Devotion’s ev’ry grace, except the heart!
The Pow’r, incens’d, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
But haply, in some cottage far apart,
May hear, well pleas’d, the language of the soul;
And in His book of life the inmates poor enrol.
XVIII.
Then homeward all take off their sev’ral way;
The youngling cottagers retire to rest:
Their Parent-pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,
That He, who stills the raven’s clam’rous nest,
And decks the lily fair in flow’ry pride,
Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
For them and for their little ones provide;
But, chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.
XIX.
From scenes like these, old Scotia’s grandeur springs,
That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad:
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
“An honest man’s the noblest work of God;” [53] Pope.
And certes, in fair virtue’s heav’nly road,
The cottage leaves the palace far behind;
What is a lordship’s pomp? a cumbrous load,
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of Hell, in wickedness refin’d!
XX.
O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And, O! may heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury’s contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe’er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov’d Isle.
XXI.
O Thou! who pour’d the patriotic tide
That stream’d through Wallace’s undaunted heart:
Who dar’d to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
Or nobly die, the second glorious part,
(The patriot’s God, peculiarly Thou art,
His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)
O never, never, Scotia’s realm desert;
But still the patriot, and the patriot bard,
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!