by Robert Burns
40 Wi’ sharpen’d, sly inspection.
The sacred lowe o’ weel-plac’d love, flame, well-
Luxuriantly indulge it;
But never tempt th’ illicit rove,
Tho’ naething should divulge it: nothing
45 I waive the quantum o’ the sin,
The hazard of concealing;
But, Och! it hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling!
To catch Dame Fortune’s golden smile,
50 Assiduous wait upon her;
And gather gear by ev’ry wile worldly goods, skill
That’s justify’d by Honor:
Not for to hide it in a hedge, not to be a miser
Nor for a train-attendant; not for showy wealth
55 But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent.
The fear o’ Hell’s a hangman’s whip
To haud the wretch in order; hold
But where ye feel your Honour grip,
60 Let that ay be your border: always
Its slightest touches, instant pause —
Debar a’ side-pretences; consider no distraction
And resolutely keep its laws,
Uncaring consequences.
65 The great CREATOR to revere
Must sure become the Creature;
But still the preaching cant forbear,
And ev’n the rigid feature:
Yet ne’er with Wits prophane to range
70 Be complaisance extended;
An atheist-laugh’s a poor exchange
For Deity offended!
When ranting round in Pleasure’s ring, making merry/fun
Religion may be blinded;
75 Or if she gie a random-fling, give
It may be little minded;
But when on Life we’re tempest-driv’n,
A Conscience but a canker — peevishness
A correspondence fix’d wi’ Heav’n
80 Is sure a noble anchor!
Adieu, dear, amiable youth!
Your heart can ne’er be wanting!
May Prudence, Fortitude, and Truth,
Erect your brow undaunting!
85 In ploughman phrase, ‘GOD send you speed,’
Still daily to grow wiser;
And may ye better reck the rede, heed the advice
Than ever did th’ Adviser!
This was written for his friend Robert Aitken’s son Andrew and was finished in May, 1786. Robert Aitken is the legal hero of Holy Willie’s Prayer. Prudent counsellor is not the most probable of Burns’s multiple roles. The problems implicit in the poem are highlighted by a deeply cautionary letter sent four years later to his younger brother William who was moving from Newcastle to London to pursue his career as a saddler:
Now that you are setting out from that place, put on manly resolve, & determine to persevere; and in that case you will less or more be sure of success. – One or two things allow me to particularize to you. – London swarms with worthless wretches who prey on their fellow-creatures’ thoughtlessness or inexperience. – Be cautious in forming connections with comrades and companions. – You can be pretty good company to yourself, & you cannot be too shy of letting any body know you farther than to know you as a Sadler. – Another caution; I give you great credit for you [sic] sobriety with respect to that universal vice, Bad Women … – Whoring is a most ruinous expensive species of dissipation; is spending a poor fellow’s money with which he ought clothe and support himself nothing? Whoring has ninety-nine chances in a hundred to bring on a man the most nauseous & excruciating diseases to which Human nature is liable; are disease & an impaired constitution trifling considerations? All this is independent of the criminality of it (Letter 391).
This, from a man so addicted to women, should not be seen simply as massive hypocrisy. From as yet unpublished sources, Burns does seem to have suffered the venereal self-disgust of the so infected. More importantly, as in such Romantic libertine figures centrally present in the life and work of Mozart, Boswell, Byron and Pushkin, there exists, as a result of such serial fornication, a sense of self-punitive, guilty emptiness. Or, as it is brilliantly, vernacularly, put here:
I wave the quantum o’ the sin,
The hazard of concealing;
But Och! It hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling.
R.L. Stevenson diagnosed this element in Burns and wrote him off because of it (Familiar Studies of Men and Books). G. K. Chesterton, more perceptively objective about the Scottish context, wrote in a brilliant foreword to A.A. Thomson’s profoundly bad The Burns We Love (London: 1931):
Nor is it true to say, as some have said, that this self-reproach was merely of the morbid or mawkish sort. So far from being mawkish and morbid, it could sometimes be both acrid and coarse. He really had a sense of something grotesque and even grovelling in his own orgies; of something of farce and bathos about the bad ending of so many of his love stories; a sense of being hooted from heaven with a sort of harsh laughter. In a word, he had a realistic as well as a romantic strain in him; and it is not altogether his fault that the national legend of his has become almost entirely romantic, to the extent of often forgetting how far his own view of himself was realistic (p. 5–6).
As well as the dangers, physical and moral, of sexual excess, Burns, in both the letter to William and in this poem, defines prudence as a necessary form of self-preservation in a world so variedly hostile. In a deeply perceptive essay, ‘The Dialectics of Morality’, Steven R. McKenna defines the question of necessary prudence as being a core problem in Burns’s writings. In support of this thesis he identifies ll. 33–40 as a vernacular paraphrase of Polonius’s cautionary speech to his son, Laertes in Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii. In extending these Hamlet parallels he finally reads the epistle as reaching for a kind of middle way of individual conscience, which avoids the one extreme of sadistically repressive conformity and the other of anarchic self-destruction. Burns himself appears to have understood how his repressed early life was partly responsible for his potentially self-destructive response to rigidly imposed order. As McKenna comments:
Honour and self-protection are the issues here, and they form essential elements of this scene in the play, for Laertes in his long-winded, cautionary advice to his sister Ophelia regarding her relationship with Hamlet tells her she ‘must fear’ Hamlet, his greatness and his will. Says he, ‘Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister …/ Be wary then; best safety lies in fear’ (I. 3.33, 42). A similar sentiment pervades Polonius’s advice to her later in the scene: Hamlet’s vows are to be held suspect that her honour is at stake. When taken together, these issues are a call to trust no one but oneself and to fear the power of others. And these are fundamental themes in Burns’s ‘Epistle to a Young Friend’. As in the case of Shakespeare’s play, Burns’s advice preaches an essential mistrust of the world, hence leads to a stultifying and isolating philosophy of life. Leaving aside the very possibility that Burns may be engaging in a bit of tongue-in-cheek irony with the epistle, the philosophy upon which it is premised is a matter of crime and punishment, and this takes two forms. First, insofar as religion and, broadly speaking, morality are concerned, fear particularly as something that can be manipulated by institutions and powers beyond the individual’s control, is that which key ‘To haud the wretch in order’ as Burns says (l. 58). The second fear, and for Burns apparently the more important of the two, is the fear of self-punishment. In other words, one’s sense of honour and integrity appears to be paramount, superseding potentially the ‘fear o’ hell’ (l. 57). This is not to say Burns thumbs his nose at God, for stanzas nine and ten he sees the natural necessity of ‘the Creature’ revering the ‘Creator’. Rather, this aspect of his epistle centres squarely on pitting the individual and conscience in opposition to formalised, institutionalised dogma. As he says, ‘… still the preaching cant forbear, / And ev’n the rigid feature’ (67–8). Thus, in this case, organised religio
n is not the solution but rather the problem. Another case of churches built to please the priest, to bestow upon the ecclesiastical class the power to control people’s lives. In the face of this, Burns posits the apparently radical notion that one’s conscience should be one’s guide (See Love and Liberty, p. 159).
On a Scotch Bard
Gone to the West Indies
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
A’ Ye wha live by sowps o’ drink, who, mouthfuls
A’ ye wha live by crambo-clink, who, doggerel verse
A’ ye wha live and never think, who
Come, mourn wi’ me
5 Our billie’s gien us a’ a jink, friend, given, the slip
An’ owre the Sea. over
Lament him a’ ye rantan core, merry crowd
Wha dearly like a random-splore; who, frolic
Nae mair he’ll join the merry roar, no more
10 In social key;
For now he’s taen anither shore, taken another
An’ owre the Sea! over
The bonie lasses weel may wiss him, handsome, well, wish
And in their dear petitions place him:
15 The widows, wives, an’ a’ may bless him
Wi’ tearfu’ e’e; eye
For weel I wat they’ll sairly miss him well I trust/know, sorely
That’s owre the Sea! over
O Fortune, they hae room to grumble! have
20 Hadst thou taen aff some drowsy bummle, taken off, bungler
Wha can do nought but fyke an’ fumble, who, fuss
’Twad been nae plea; it would have, no
But he was gleg as onie wumble, keen-eyed, gimlet (phallus)
That’s owre the Sea! over
25 Auld, cantie KYLE may weepers wear, old, cheerful, mourning cuffs
An’ stain them wi’ the saut, saut tear: salt, salt
’Twill mak her poor auld heart, I fear, old
In flinders flee: splinters fly
He was her Laureat monie a year, poetic champion, many
30 That’s owre the Sea! over
He saw Misfortune’s cauld Nor-west cold, north-
Lang-mustering up a bitter blast; long-
A Jillet brak his heart at last, broke
Ill may she be!
35 So, took a berth afore the mast,
An’ owre the Sea! over
To tremble under Fortune’s cummock, rod
On scarce a bellyfu’ o’ drummock, stomachful, meal & water
Wi’ his proud, independent stomach,
40 Could ill agree;
So, row’t his hurdies in a hammock, rolled, hips/buttocks
An’ owre the Sea! over
He ne’er was gien to great misguidin, given
Yet coin his pouches wad na bide in; pockets would not stay
45 Wi’ him it ne’er was under hidin,
He dealt it free: gave it away
The Muse was a’ that he took pride in,
That’s owre the Sea! over
Jamaica bodies, use him weel, folk, well
50 An’ hap him in a cozie biel: shelter, cosy place
Ye’ll find him ay a dainty chiel, friendly fellow
An’ fou o’ glee: full of good nature
He wad na wrang’d the vera Deil, would not wrong, very Devil
That’s owre the Sea! over
55 Fareweel, my rhyme-composing billie! farewell, friend
Your native soil was right ill-willie: ill-willed
But may ye flourish like a lily,
Now bonilie!
I’ll toast you in my hindmost gillie, last gill (whisky)
60 Tho’ owre the Sea! over
There is unresolved critical contention about the reality of Burns’s plan to immigrate to Jamaica. Kinsley writes (Vol. III, p. 1176):
The spirit of On a Scotch Bard, though sturdily more cheerful than that of the letters, hardly justifies Daiches’s view that Burns was never serious about emigrating (pp. 95, 189). He was volatile, and ready to shift to extremes; he was capable of representing his misfortunes as tragic or comic, as occasions for dependency or from a display of swaggering courage. ‘I have heard Wordsworth praise the ready flow of verse in this poem,’ says Cunningham (1834, II. 288), ‘and recite with much emotion the eighth and ninth stanza’.
Facts would seem to be on Kinsley’s side. The poet’s letters are detailed about the voyage. The ship’s delay seems to have prevented the journey. What is not in doubt is the degree of tormented uncertainty underlying the poetry of that period. He did want to be the rooted, celebrated Bard of Kyle. The bitter fracas with Jean Armour’s family had, however, thrown him into the merciless path of his Auld Licht enemies. He wrote to Dr Moore that:
I had for some time been skulking from covert under all the terrors of a Jail; as some ill-advised, ungrateful people had uncoupled the merciless legal Pack at my heels (Letter 125).
The writ was taken out by Mr Armour, Jean’s father (Letter 254). Even in October 1786, after the Kilmarnock edition, he could still write:
… the consequences of my follies, which may perhaps make it impracticable to stay at home … I have some time been pining under secret wretchedness … the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures … My gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner (Letter 53).
Despite the moment of deeply ill-judged self-pity with the denigration of Jean (ll. 34–5) as mere jilt, the poem is fuelled, if not quite by the ‘madness of an intoxicated criminal’ then certainly by the wild energy of a partly comic revenge fantasy on his often betraying fellow countrymen and women who, in his absence, will certainly bitterly discover what they have lost. Exile and cunning but not silence are part of this national poet’s repertoire.
It should also be noted that this is, deliberately, not straight biography. The poem’s tone and content are wittily distanced by being the monologue of an unnamed but sympathetic poet narrator. This poet, addressing his impoverished fellow poets, turns Burns’s particular case into a general view, as in Goldsmith, of the penurious state of the poetic career in the late eighteenth century. Wordsworth’s perceptive admiration for its linguistic and metrical virtues probably extended to a mutual sympathy for this theme.
A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, Esq
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
EXPECT na, Sir, in this narration, not
A fleechan, fleth’ran Dedication, wheedling, flattering
To roose you up, an’ ca’ you guid, praise, call, good
An’ sprung o’ great an’ noble bluid, blood
5 Because ye’re surnam’d like His Grace,1
Perhaps related to the race:
Then, when I’m tired — and sae are ye, so
Wi’ monie a fulsome, sinfu’ lie, many
Set up a face, how I stop short,
10 For fear your modesty be hurt.
This may do — maun do, Sir, wi’ them wha shall, who
Maun please the Great-folk for a wamefou; must, bellyful
For me! sae laigh I need na bow, so low, not
For, LORD be thankit, I can plough;
15 And when I downa yoke a naig, do not/cannot, horse
Then, LORD be thanket, I can beg;
Sae I shall say, an’ that’s nae flatt’rin, so, not
It’s just sic Poet an’ sic Patron. such a
The Poet, some guid Angel help him, good
20 Or else, I fear, some ill ane skelp him! devil, smack
He may do weel for a’ he’s done yet, well
But only — he’s no just begun yet.
The Patron (Sir, ye maun forgie me, must forgive
I winna lie, come what will o’ me) will not
25 On ev’ry hand it will allow’d be,
He’s just — nae better than he should be. no
I readily and freely grant,
> He downa see a poor man want; would not
What’s no his ain he winna tak it; own, will not
30 What ance he says, he winna break it; once, will not
Ought he can lend he’ll no refus’t,
Till aft his guidness is abus’d; often, goodness
And rascals whyles that do him wrang, sometimes, wrong
Ev’n that, he does na mind it lang; not, long
35 As Master, Landlord, Husband, Father,
He does na fail his part in either. not
But then, nae thanks to him for a’ that no
Nae godly symptom ye can ca’ that; no, call
It’s naething but a milder feature nothing
40 Of our poor, sinfu’, corrupt Nature:
Ye’ll get the best o’ moral works,
’Mang black Gentoos, and Pagan Turks, Indians, Hindus
Or Hunters wild on Ponotaxi, Cotopaxi in Ecuador
Wha never heard of Orthodoxy. who
45 That he’s the poor man’s friend in need,
The GENTLEMAN in word and deed,
It’s no thro’ terror of Damnation:
It’s just a carnal inclination,
[And Och! that’s nae regeneration].2
50 Morality, thou deadly bane, poison
Thy tens o’ thousands thou hast slain!
Vain is his hope, whase stay an’ trust is whose
In moral Mercy, Truth, and Justice!
No — stretch a point to catch a plack; farthing/coin
55 Abuse a Brother to his back;
Steal thro’ the winnock frae a whore, window from
But point the rake that taks the door;
Be to the Poor like onie whunstane,
And haud their noses to the grunstane; hold, grindstone
60 Ply ev’ry art o’ legal thieving;
