Robert Burns - Part 9

This is the final blog of poetry by Robert Burns. In parts 1-7 I have looked at Burns’s life as reflected in his poems. So Ideally you should start at 1 and patiently maker your way to 7. There is a shortcut, however, in these last two blogs, 8 and 9. Here you will find a selection of poems that are not set in context, nor are they in any particular order. Put simply, they are here to be enjoyed.


She Says She Lo’es Me Best Of A’
       (Tune-Onagh’s Waterfall)

Sae flaxen were her ringlets,
   Her eyebrows of a darker hew,
Bewitching O’er-arching
   Twa laughing e’en o’ bonnie blue;
Here smiling sae wyling
   Wad make a wretch forget his woe;
What pleasure, what treasure,
   Unto these rosy lips to grow.
Such was my Chloris’ bonnie face,
   When first that bonnie face I saw,
And aye My Chloris’ dearest charm—
   She says she lo’es me best of a’

Like harmony her motion;
   Her pretty ankle is a spy,
Betraying fair proportion
   Wad make a saint forget the sky.
Sae warming, sae charming,
   Her faultless form and gracefu’ air;
Ilk feature-auld Nature
   Declar’d that she could do nae mair:
Hers are the willing chains of love,
   By conquering beauty’s sovereign law;
And aye my Chloris’ dearest charm—
   She says she loves me best of a’

Let others love the city,
   And gaudy show at sunny noon;
Give me the lonely valley,
   The dewey eve and rising moon,
Fair beaming and streaming
   Her silver light the bows amang;
While falling, recalling,
   The amorous thrush concludes his sang;
There, dearest Chloris, wilt thou rove,
   By wimpling burn and leafy shaw,
And hear my vows o’ truth and love,
   And say, thou lo’es me best of a’.
_____

          Pretty Peg

As I gae up by yon gate-end,
   When day was waxin’ weary,
What did I meet come down the street,
   But pretty Peg, my dearie!

Her air sae sweet, an’ shape complete,
   Wi’ nae proportion wanting,
The Queen of Love did never more
   Wi’ motion mair enchanting.

Wi’ linket hands, we took the sands,
   Adown yon winding river;
And O that hour and shady bower,
   Can I forget it? Never
_____

O Lassie, Art Thou Sleeping
(Tune – Will ye lend me your loom)

Chorus: O let me in this ae night,
This ae, ae, ae night;
For pity’s sake this ae night,
   O rise and let me in Jo.

O lassie, art thou sleeping yet,
O art thou wakin’, I would wit?
For love has bound me hand an’ fit,
   And I would fain be in jo.

Thou hears’t the winter winds and weet?
Nae star blinks thro’ the driving sleet;
Take pity on my weary feet;
   And shield me frae the rain, jo.

The bitter blast that round me blaws,
Unheeded howls, unheeded fa’s;
The cauldness o’ thy heart’s the cause.
   Of a’ my care and pine, jo.

      Her Answer

Chorus: I tell you now this ae night,
The ae, ae, ae night;
And once for a’ this ae night,
   I winna let ye in, jo.

O tell na me o’ wind an’ rain,
Upbraid na me wi’ cauld disdain,
Gae back the gait ye cam again,
   I winna let ye in, jo.

The smallest blast, at mirkest hours,
That round the pathless wand’rer pours
Is nocht to what poor She endures,
   That’s trusted faithless Man, jo.

The sweetest flower that deck’d the mead,
Now trodden like the vilest weed;
Let simple maid the lesson read,
   The weird may be her ain, jo.

The bird that charm’d his summer day.
Is now the cruel fowler’s prey;
Let that to witless woman say-
   How aft her fate’s the same, jo.
_____

Epistle From Esopus To Maria

From those dear solitude and frowsy cells,
Where infamy with sad repentance dwells;
Where turnkeys make the jealous portals fast,
And deal from iron hands the spare repast;
Where truant’ prentices, yet young in sin,
Blush at the curious stranger peeping in;
Where strumpets, relics of the drunkan roar,
Resolve to drink-may half, to whore-no more;
Where tiny thieves, not destined yet to swing,
Beat hemp for others, riper for the string:
From these dire scenes my wretched lines I date,
To tell Maria her Esopus’ fate.

“Alas I feel I am no actor here!” ‘
Tis real hangmen real scourges bear
Prepare Maria, for a horrid tale
Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale;
Will make thy hair, tho’ erst from gipsy pull’d,
By barber woven, and by barber sold,
Tho’ twisted smooth by Harry’s nicest care,
Like hoary bristles to erect and stare.
The hero of the mimic scene, no more
I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar;
Or haughty chieftain, ‘mid the din of arms,
In Highland bonnet, woo Malvina’s charms:
While sans-culottes stoop up the mountain high,
And steal from me Maria’s prying eye.

Blest Highland bonnet, once my proudest dress,
Now prouder still, Maria’s temples press;
I see her waive thy towering plumes afar,
And call each coxcomb to the wordy war:
I see her face the first of Ireland’s sons,
And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze;
The crafty colonel leaves the tartan’d lines;
For other wars, where he a hero shines:
The hopeful youth, in Scottish senate bread,
Who owns a Bushby’s heart without the head,
Comes, “mid a string of coxcombs, to display
That Veni, vidi, vici is his way:
The shrinking bard adown the alley skulks
And dreads a meeting worse than Woolwich hulks,
Tho’ there, his heresies in Church and State
Might well award him Muir and Palmer’s fate:
Still she, undaunted, reels and rattles on,
And dares the public like a moontide sun!

What scandal call’d Maria’s jaunty stagger
The ricket reeling of a crucial swagger?
What slander nam’d her seeming want of art
The flimsy wrapper of a rotten heart.
Whose spleen e’en worse than Burns’ venom, when
He dips in gall unmix’d his eager pen,
And pours his vengance in the burning line,
Who christen’d thus Mari’s lyre divine
The idiot strum of vanity bemus’d,
And even the abuse of Poesy abus’d?
Who called her verse a parish workhouse, made
For motley, fondling fancies, stolen or strayed?

A workhouse! Ah, that sound awakes my woes,
And pillows on the thorn my rack’d repose!
In durance vile here must I wake and weep,
And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep!
That straw where many a rogue has lain of yore,
And vermin’d gipsies litter’d heretofore.
Why, Lonsdale, thus thy wrath on vagrants pour?
Must earth no rascal save thyself endure?
Must thou alone in guilt immortal swell,
And make a vast monopoly of hell?
Thou knowest the Virtues cannot hate thee worse;
The Vices also, must they club their curse?
Or must no tiny sin to others fall,
Because thy guilt’s supreme enough for all?

Marie, send me to thy grief and cares;
In all of these, sure, thy Esopus shares.
As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls,
Who on my fair one Satire’s vengeance hurls?
Who calls thee, pert, affected, vain coquette,
A wit in folly and a fool in wit!
Who says that Food alone is not thy due,
And quotes thy treacheries to prove it true?
Our force united on they foes we’ll turn,
And dare the ware with all of woman burn:
For who can write and speak as thou and I?
My periods that deciphering defy,
And thy still matchless tongue that conquers all reply.
_____

Phillis, The Queen O’ Fair
(Tune – The muchin o’ Geordie’s byre)

Chorus: Awa’ we’ your belles and your beauties,
   They never wi’ her can compare,
Wha-ever has met wi’ my Phillis,
   Has met wi’ the queen o’ the fare.

Adown winding Nith I did wander,
   To mark the sweet flowers as the spring;
Adown winding Nith I did wander,
   Of Phillis to muse and to sing.

The daisy amus’d my fond fancy,
   So artless, so simple, so wild;
“Thou emblem,” said I, “o’ my Phillis!”
   For she is simplicity’s child.

The rosebud’s the blush o’ my charmer,
   Her sweet balmy lip when ‘tis prest;
How fair and how pure is the lily,
   But fairer and purer her breast.

Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbour,
   The ne’er wi’ my Phillis can vie;
Her breath is the breath o’ the woodbine,
   Its dewdrops o’ diamonds her eye.

Her voice is the song o’ the morning,
   That wakes thro’ the green spreading grove
When Phoebus peeps over the mountains,
   On music, and pleasure and love.

But beauty, how frail and how fleeting,
   The bloom of a fine summer’s day!
While worth in the mind o’ my Phillis
   Will flourish without a decay.

_______________

Cormac McCloskey
Note: This blog, "Robert Burns - Part 9",  was first published on Windows Live Spaces, by me, on 11th February 2006