by Robert Burns
In loyal, true affection,
70 To pay your QUEEN, wi’ due respect,
My fealty an’ subjection
This great Birth-day.
Hail, Majesty most Excellent!
While Nobles strive to please Ye,
75 Will Ye accept a Compliment,
A simple Bardie gies Ye? gives
Thae bonie Bairntime, Heav’n has lent, that pretty brood
Still higher may they heeze Ye hoist
In bliss, till Fate some day is sent,
80 For ever to release Ye
Frae Care that day. from
For you, young Potentate o’ Wales,
I tell your Highness fairly,
Down Pleasure’s stream, wi’ swelling sails,
85I’m tauld ye’re driving rarely; told, unusually well
But some day ye may gnaw your nails,
An’ curse your folly sairly, sorely
That e’er ye brak Diana’s pales, break
Or rattl’d dice wi’ Charlie
90 By night or day.
Yet aft a ragged Cowte’s been known, colt
To mak a noble Aiver; make, old horse
So, ye may doucely fill a Throne, soberly
For a’ their clish-ma-claver: gossip
95 There, Him at Agincourt wha shone, who
Few better were or braver;
And yet, wi’ funny, queer Sir John,1
He was an unco shaver a great madcap
For monie a day. many
100 For you, right rev’rend Osnaburg,
Nane sets the lawn-sleeve sweeter, none, becomes
Altho’ a ribban at your lug ribbon, ear
Wad been a dress compleater: would
As ye disown yon paughty dog, proud
105 That bears the Keys of Peter,
Then swith! an’ get a wife to hug,
Or trowth, ye’ll stain the Mitre in truth
Some luckless day.
Young, royal TARRY-BREEKS, I learn,
110 Ye’ve lately come athwart her;
A glorious Galley, stem an’ stern
Weel rigg’d for Venus barter;2 well
But first hang out that she’ll discern
Your hymeneal Charter;
115 Then heave aboard your grapple-airn, grappling iron
An’, large upon her quarter,
Come full that day.
Ye, lastly, bonie blossoms a’,
Ye royal Lasses dainty,
120 Heav’n mak you guid as weel as braw, good, well, fair
An’ gie you lads a-plenty: give
But sneer na British-boys awa! not, away
For Kings are unco scant ay, greatly scarce
An’ German-gentles are but sma’, small
125 They’re better just than want ay
On onie day. any
God bless you a’! consider now,
Ye’re unco muckle dautet; greatly fussed over
But ere the course o’ life be through,
130 It may be bitter sautet: salted
An’ I hae seen their coggie fou, have, plate full
That yet hae tarrow’t at it; shown reluctance
But or the day was done, I trow, believe
The laggen they hae clautet bottom, have scraped
135 Fu’ clean that day.
Byron must have read this with admiration; he himself never wrote anything funnier or, amidst the laughter, landed on the Hanoverians, he also so loathed, so many palpable hits. Describing it as a ‘dream’ allows Burns, as in the headquote, to claim its non-serious nature and intent. It also, of course, allows him direct, deadly access as ‘humble poet’ into the royal birthday levee.
George’s birthday on 4th June 1786 had been celebrated by the laureate, Thomas Warton with a Pindaric ode. Burns’s almost immediate response to this sycophantic work enabled him to insert the poem into the Kilmarnock edition. These were not the sentiments of a complicit ‘heaven taught ploughman’ and Mrs Dunlop was quick to warn him as to the commercial consequences of such satire. On 26th February 1787 she wrote to him urging that A Dream should be excluded from the second edition:
I ought to have told you that numbers at London are learning Scots to read your book, but they don’t like your address to the King, and say it will hurt the sale of the rest. Of this I am no judge. I can only say there is no piece … I would vote to leave out, tho’ several where I would draw my pen over the lines, or spill the ink glass over a verse. (Robert Burns and Mrs Dunlop, ed. William Wallace (London: 1898), p. 11)
Burns’s response was peremptory and unyielding:
Your criticisms, Madam I understand very well, and could have wished to have pleased you better. You are right in your guesses that I am not very amenable. Poets, much my superiors, have so flattered those who possessed the adventitious qualities of wealth and power that I am determined to flatter no created being, either in prose or verse, so help me God. I set as little by kings, lords, clergy, critics, &c as all these respectable Gentry do by my Bardship. I know what I may expect from the world, by and by, illiberal abuse and contemptuous neglect: but I am resolved to study the sentiments of a very respectable Personage, Milton’s Satan – Hail horrors! Hail infernal world!
I am happy, Madam, that some of my favourite pieces are distinguished by you’re particular approbation. For my DREAM which has unfortunately incurred your loyal dis-pleasure, I hope in four weeks time or less to have the honour of appearing, at Dunlop, in it’s defence in person (Letter 98).
It is hard to see what sort of convincing defence Burns could have mounted concerning the danger to his incipient poetic career with regard to the flagrantly disloyal, anti-Hanoverian elements of this poem. Beginning with the general weakened fiscal state of the nation resulting from the disastrously lost American war and Pitt’s subsequent punitive taxation policies and naval cuts (ll. 60–2) with an inverted political order where the lowest types are at the top of the government, Burns launches into a highly specific assault on the varied cupidities and promiscuities of what he consistently perceived as an irretrievably dysfunctional family of German upstarts. L. 26 contrasts the virtues of Charles Edward Stuart.
The treatment of the King and Queen is mild compared to that doled out to their children. Driven by infantile, Oedipal rage, the Prince of Wales, had flung himself into the grossly licentious world of whoring and gambling of ‘Charlie’ Fox’s opposing Whigs. Brilliantly, ironically, Burns (ll. 91–9) compresses an allusion to post-Falstaffian redemption to this Prince of Wales. The ploughman poet, tellingly, feels he needs to explain this reference to Henry IV to his cultivated audience. The ‘right rev’rend Osnaburg’ is Frederick Augustus (1763–1827) who was ‘elected’ to the bishopric of Asna-burg in Westphalia by his father, George III, in 1764. He added to this clerical distinction by taking up with Letita Derby, the ex-mistress of Rann the highwayman. The ‘Royal TARRY-BREEKS’ (l. 109) is another prodigally gifted son, Prince William (1765–1837), who became William IV in 1830. He had become naughtily, nautically involved with Sarah Martin, daughter of the commissioner of the Portsmouth dockyard. This encounter may have been derived from what Kinsley describes as the ‘ingenious model’ in Robert Sempill’s Ballat Maid Upoun Margaret Fleming, callit the Fleming Bark in Edinburgh, which was modernised in Ramsay’s The Ever Green (1724). Similar metaphors of dropped tackle and predatory boarding parties can also be found in Donne, followed by Pope.
Burns claims that his knowledge of this particular incident came from a newspaper. It is probable that most of this kind of information so came to him. Unlike Wordsworth, who was wholly averse to what he saw as such vulgar contemporary contaminants, Burns belongs to an earlier satirical tradition. He not only throve on journalistic gossip, but could transmute it, like Byron, into great poetry. He also refers warmly to Hogarth and the whole world of eighteenth-century political caricature had undoubtedly a strong influence on him, perhaps not yet fully appreciated. The King also had five daughters (ll. 118�
��126) who were, needless to say, not noted for their beauty, unlike their chronic constipation.
1 Sir John Falstaff, Vide Shakespeare. R.B.
2 Alluding to the Newspaper account of a certain royal Sailor’s Amour. R.B.
The Vision
Duan First1
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
The Sun had clos’d the winter-day,
The Curlers quat their roaring play, quit
And hunger’d Maukin taen her way, hare, taken
To kail-yards green, kitchen-gardens
5 While faithless snaws ilk step betray snows each
Whare she has been. where
The Thresher’s weary flingin-tree, flailing
The lee-lang day had tired me; live-long
And when the Day had clos’d his e’e eye
10 Far i’ the West,
Ben i’ the Spence, right pensivelie, back, parlour
I gaed to rest. went
There, lanely by the ingle-cheek, lonely, fire side
I sat and ey’d the spewing reek, smoke
15 That fill’d, wi’ hoast-provoking smeek, cough, smoke
The auld clay biggin; old, building
An’ heard the restless rattons squeak rats
About the riggin. roof
All in this mottie, misty clime, dusty specks
20 I backward mus’d on wasted time:
How I had spent my youthfu’ prime,
An’ done naething, nothing
But stringing blethers up in rhyme, nonesense stories
For fools to sing.
25 Had I to guid advice but harket, good, listened
I might, by this, hae led a market, have
Or strutted in a bank and clarket clarked
My Cash-Account:
While here, half-mad, half-fed, half-sarket, half-clothed
30 Is a’ th’ amount.
I started, mutt’ring blockhead! coof! fool
An’ heav’d on high my wauket loof, horny palm/hand
To swear by a’ yon starry roof,
Or some rash aith, oath
35 That I, henceforth, would be rhyme-proof
Till my last breath —
When click! the string the snick did draw; door latch
And jee! the door gaed to the wa’; went, wall
And by my ingle-lowe I saw, fire-flame
40 Now bleezan bright,
A tight, outlandish Hizzie, braw, girl
Come full in sight.
Ye need na doubt, I held my whisht; not doubt, said nothing
The infant aith, half-form’d, was crusht; oath/pledge
45 I glowr’d as eerie’s I’d been dusht, stared, touched
In some wild glen;
When sweet, like modest Worth, she blusht,
And stepped ben. inside
Green, slender, leaf-clad Holly-boughs leaf-clothed/covered
50 Were twisted, gracefu’, round her brows;
I took her for some SCOTTISH MUSE,
By that same token;
And come to stop those reckless vows,
Would soon been broken.
55 A ‘hair-brain’d, sentimental trace’
Was strongly marked in her face;
A wildly-witty, rustic grace
Shone full upon her;
Her eye, ev’n turn’d on empty space,
60 Beam’d keen with Honor.
Down flow’d her robe, a tartan sheen, bright
Till half a leg was scrimply seen; barely
And such a leg! my bonie JEAN
Could only peer it; equal
65 Sae straught, sae taper, tight an’ clean so, straight, so
Nane else came near it. no-one
Her Mantle large, of greenish hue,
My gazing wonder chiefly drew;
Deep lights and shades, bold-mingling, threw
70 A lustre grand;
And seem’d, to my astonish’d view,
A well-known Land.
Here, rivers in the sea were lost;
There, mountains to the skies were tosst;
75 Here, tumbling billows mark’d the coast,
With surging foam;
There, distant shone Art’s lofty boast,
The lordly dome.
Here, DOON pour’d down his far-fetch’d floods;
80 There, well-fed IRWINE stately thuds: beats/churns
Auld hermit AIRE staw thro’ his woods, Ayr, stole/steals
On to the shore;
And many a lesser torrent scuds races along
With seeming roar.
85 Low, in a sandy valley spread,
An ancient BOROUGH rear’d her head;
Still, as in Scottish Story read,
She boasts a Race
To ev’ry nobler virtue bred,
90 And polish’d grace.
[By stately tow’r, or palace fair,
Or ruins pendent in the air,
Bold stems of Heroes, here and there,
I could discern;
95 Some seem’d to muse, some seem’d to dare,
With feature stern.
My heart did glowing transport feel,
To see a Race2 heroic wheel,
And brandish round the deep-dy’d steel
100 In sturdy blows;
While, back-recoiling, seem’d to reel
Their Suthron foes. English
His COUNTRY’S SAVIOUR,3 mark him well!
Bold RICHARDTON’S4 heroic swell;
105 The Chief on Sark5 who glorious fell
In high command;
And He whom ruthless Fates expel
His native land.
There, where a sceptr’d Pictish6 shade
110 Stalk’d round his ashes lowly laid,
I mark’d a martial Race, pourtray’d
In colours strong:
Bold, soldier-featur’d, undismay’d,
They strode along.
115 Thro’ many a wild, romantic grove,7
Near many a hermit-fancy’d cove
(Fit haunts for Friendship or for Love
In musing mood),
An aged Judge, I saw him rove,
120 Dispensing good.
With deep-struck, reverential awe,8
The learned Sire and Son I saw:
To Nature’s God, and Nature’s law,
They gave their lore;
125 This, all its source and end to draw,
That, to adore.
BRYDON’S brave Ward I well could spy,9
Beneath old SCOTIA’S smiling eye;
Who call’d on Fame, low standing by,
130 To hand him on,
Where many a Patriot-name on high,
And Hero shone].
The final seven stanzas, enclosed above in square brackets, were added in the Edinburgh edition, 1787.
Duan Second
With musing-deep, astonish’d stare,
I view’d the heavenly-seeming Fair;
A whisp’ring throb did witness bear
Of kindred sweet,
5 When with an elder Sister’s air
She did me greet.
‘All hail! my own inspired Bard!
In me thy native Muse regard!
Nor longer mourn thy fate is hard,
10 Thus poorly low!
I come to give thee such reward,
As we bestow.’
‘Know, the great Genius of this land
Has many a light, aerial band,
15 Who, all beneath his high command,
Harmoniously,
As Arts or Arms they understand,
Their labors ply.
‘They SCOTIA’S Race among them share:
20 Some fire the Sodger on to dare;
Some rouse the Patriot up to bare
Corruption’s heart;
Some teach the Bard, a darling care,
The tuneful Art.
25 ’Mong swelling floods of reeking gore, smoking
&
nbsp; They, ardent, kindling spirits pour;
Or,’ mid the venal Senate’s roar,
They, sightless, stand,
To mend the honest Patriot-lore,
30 And grace the hand.
‘And when the Bard, or hoary Sage,
Charm or instruct the future age,
They bind the wild Poetic rage
In energy;
35 Or point the inconclusive page
Full on the eye.
‘Hence, FULLARTON, the brave and young;10
Hence, DEMPSTER’S zeal-inspirèd tongue;11
Hence, sweet, harmonious BEATTIE sung12
40 His “Minstrel lays”;
Or tore, with noble ardour stung,
The Sceptic’s bays’.
‘To lower Orders are assign’d
The humbler ranks of Human-kind,
45 The rustic Bard, the lab’ring Hind,
The Artisan;
All chuse, as various they’re inclin’d,
The various man.
‘When yellow waves the heavy grain,
50 The threat’ning Storm some strongly rein,
Some teach to meliorate the plain,
With tillage-skill;
And some instruct the Shepherd-train,
Blythe o’er the hill.
55 ‘Some hint the Lover’s harmless wile;
Some grace the Maiden’s artless smile;
Some soothe the Lab’rer’s weary toil
For humble gains,
And make his cottage-scenes beguile
60 His cares and pains.
‘Some, bounded to a district-space,
Explore at large Man’s infant race,
To mark the embryotic trace
Of rustic Bard;
65 And careful note each op’ning grace,
A guide and guard.
‘Of these am I — COILA my name;
And this distrìct as mine I claim,
