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

by Robert Burns

  Burns did not go to Jamaica, although he had secured a berth on a ship to take him to that beautiful island. Calls came to him just in time to publish an edition of his poems in Edinburgh. He answered the calls, startled and delighted Edinburgh society, published his poems, and met Clarinda.

  Mrs M’Lehose was a cultured and charming grass-widow. She had been courted and married by a wealthy young man in Glasgow when she was only seventeen years of age. Though a lady of the highest character, on the advice of relatives and friends she left her husband. He then went to Jamaica.

  Burns and Mrs M’Lehose mutually admired each other when they met, and their friendship quickly developed into affection. Under the names of Sylvander and Clarinda they conducted a love correspondence which will probably always remain the finest love correspondence of the ages. Clarinda was a religious and cultured woman; Burns was a religious and cultured man, so their letters of love are on a high plane. Clarinda wrote very good poems as well as good prose, and Burns wrote some of his best poems to Clarinda. His parting song to Clarinda is, in the opinion of many literary men, the greatest love-song of its kind ever written. Those who study the Clarinda correspondence will find not only love, but many interesting philosophical discussions regarding religion and human life.

  Thus ends the record of his real loves, notwithstanding the outrageous misstatements that his loves extended, according to one writer, to nearly four hundred. He had just four deep and serious loves, not counting the two deep and transforming affections of his adolescent period for Nellie Kirkpatrick and Peggy Thomson. He loved four women: Alison Begbie, Jean Armour, Mary Campbell, and Mrs M’Lehose. At the age of twenty-one he loved Alison Begbie, and, when twenty-two, he asked her to marry him. She declined his proposal. He was too shy to propose to her when he was with her. Get this undoubted fact into your consciousness, and think about it fairly and reasonably, and it will help you to get a truer vision of the real Burns. Read the proposal and his subsequent letter on pages 51-55, and your mind should form juster conceptions of Burns as a lover and as a man. You will find it harder to be misled by the foolish or the malicious misrepresentations that have too long passed as facts concerning him as a lover.

  From twenty-two to twenty-five he had no lover; then he loved and married Jean Armour. No act of his prevented that marriage-contract remaining in force. When her father forced the destruction of the contract, and much against his will, and in defiance of the love of his heart, he found that he had lost his wife beyond any reasonable hope of reconciliation and reunion, and was therefore free to love another, he loved Mary Campbell, and honourably proposed marriage to her. She accepted his offer, but died soon after. He was untrue to no one when he took Clarinda into his heart. Of course he could not ask her to marry him, as she was already married.

  The first three women he loved after he reached the age of twenty-one years were Alison Begbie, Jean Armour, and Mary Campbell. The first refused his offer; he married the second, and was forced into freedom by her father; the third accepted his offer of marriage, but died before they could be married. The fourth woman whom he loved loved him, but could not marry him, a fact recognised by both of them. There is not a shadow of evidence of inconstancy or unfaithfulness on his part in the eight years during which he loved the four women — the only four he did love after he became a man.

  It may be answered that Burns was not loyal to Jean Armour because he loved Mary Campbell and Clarinda after he was married to Jean. Burns absolutely believed that his marriage to Jean was annulled by the burning of the marriage certificate. He would not have pledged matrimony with Mary Campbell if he had known that Jean was still his wife. When Mary died, and he found Jean’s father was willing that he might again marry Jean, he did marry her in Gavin Hamilton’s home. In writing to Clarinda he forgot himself for a moment and spoke disrespectfully of Jean, but his prompt and honourable action in marrying her soon after showed him to be a true man.

  It should ever be remembered that Burns was in no sense a fickle lover. To each of the three women whom he loved, his love was reverent and true. He had a reverent affection for Alison Begbie after she refused him; he loved Jean Armour after she allowed their marriage-certificate to be destroyed; and he loved Mary Campbell, not only till she died, but to the end of his life. The fact that he sat out in the stackyard on Ellisland farm through the long moonlit night, with tears flowing down his cheeks, on the third anniversary of her death, and wrote ‘To Mary in Heaven,’ proves the depth and permanency of his love.

  In ‘My Eppie Adair’ he says:

  By love and by beauty, by law and by duty,

  I swear to be true to my Eppie Adair.

  In these lines Burns truly defines his own type of love.

  It is true that Miss Margaret Chalmers told the poet Campbell, after Burns died, that he had asked her to marry him. His letters to her are letters of deep friendship — reverent friendship — not love. It is true that the last poem he ever wrote was written to Margaret Chalmers, and that in it he said:

  Full well thou knowest I love thee, dear.

  But it must be remembered that Burns had been married to Jean and living happily with her for eight years, so the love of this line was not the love that is expected to lead to marriage, but an expression of reverent affection. The whole tenor of this last poem of his life indicates that he thought her feeling for him was cooling, and his deep affectionate friendship urged him to plead with her for a continuance of their long-existing and quite unusual relationship.

  Many people will doubtless say, ‘What about Chloris?’ Chloris was his name for Jean Lorimer, the daughter of a friend of his who dwelt near him when he lived on Ellisland farm after his second marriage to Jean Armour. Chloris was a sweet singer and player, who frequently visited Mrs Burns, and who sang for Burns, sometimes, with Mrs Burns the grand old Scottish airs that had long been sung to words that were not pure, and to which he was writing new and pure words nearly every day. A number of these songs were addressed to Chloris, but in a book of his poems presented to Miss Lorimer he states clearly that the love he appeared to be expressing for her was an assumed, or, as he called it, a ‘fictitious,’ and not a real love.

  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’ a
bove

  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.’