by Robert Burns
Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson
A Gentleman who Held the Patent for his Honours
Immediately from Almighty God!
First printed in the Edinburgh Magazine, August 1790, prior to publication
in the Edinburgh edition, 1793.
But now his radiant course is run,
For Matthew’s course was bright:
His soul was like the glorious sun
A matchless, Heavenly light.
BURNS.
O DEATH! thou tyrant fell and bloody!
The meikle Devil wi’ a woodie great, halter
Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie, trail, home, smithy
O’er hurcheon hides, hedgehog
5 And like stock-fish come o’er his studdie strike, anvil
Wi’ thy auld sides! old
He’s gane! he’s gane! he’s frae us torn, gone, gone, from
The ae best fellow e’er was born! one
Thee, Matthew, Nature’s sel’ shall mourn self
10 By wood and wild,
Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn,
Frae man exil’d. from
Ye hills, near neebors o’ the starns, neighbours, stars
That proudly cock your cresting cairns; display
15 Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns, eagles
Where Echo slumbers,
Come join, ye Nature’s sturdiest bairns, children
My wailing numbers.
Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens; every, wood-pigeon knows
20 Ye hazelly shaws and briery dens; woods, hollows
Ye burnies, wimplin down your glens, rivulets, winding
Wi’ toddlin din, trickling noise
Or foaming, strang, wi’ hasty stens, strong, leaps/churns
Frae lin to lin. from, waterfall
25 Mourn little harebells o’er the lea; hill edge
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see;
Ye woodbines hanging bonilie,
In scented bowers;
Ye roses on your thorny tree,
30 The first o’ flowers.
At dawn, when every grassy blade
Droops with a diamond at his head,
At even’, when beans their fragrance shed,
I’ th’ rustling gale,
35 Ye maukins whiddin through the glade, hares, skipping
Come join my wail.
Mourn, ye wee songsters o’ the wood;
Ye grouse that crap the heather bud; crop/eat
Ye curlews calling thro’ a clud; cloud
40 Ye whistling plover;
And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood; partridge
He’s gane for ever! gone
Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals; black
Ye fisher herons, watching eels;
45 Ye duck and drake, wi’ airy wheels
Circling the lake:
Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels,
Rair for his sake. roar
Mourn, clam’ring craiks at close o’ day, corncrakes
50 ’Mang fields o’ flow’ring clover gay;
And when you wing your annual way
Frae our cauld shore, from, cold
Tell thae far warlds, wha lies in clay, they, worlds, who
Wham we deplore. what
55 Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower, from
In some auld tree, or eldritch tower, old, haunted
What time the moon, wi’ silent glowr, glower/stare
Sets up her horn,
Wail thro’ the dreary midnight hour
60 Till waukrife morn. wakeful
O rivers, forests, hills, and plains!
Oft have ye heard my canty strains: cheery/joyful
But now, what else for me remains
But tales of woe?
65 And frae my een the drapping rains eyes, dropping
Maun ever flow. must/shall
Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year!
Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear: each, catch
Thou, Simmer, while each corny spear summer
70 Shoots up its head,
Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear,
For him that’s dead.
Thou, Autumn, wi’ thy yellow hair,
In grief thy sallow mantle tear;
75 Thou, Winter, hurling thro’ the air
The roaring blast,
Wide o’er the naked world declare
The worth we’ve lost.
Mourn him, thou Sun, great source of light!
80 Mourn, Empress of the silent night!
And you, ye twinkling starnies bright, little stars
My Matthew mourn;
For through your orbs he’s taen his flight, taken
Ne’er to return.
85 O Henderson! the man! the brother!
And art thou gone, and gone for ever?
And hast thou crost that unknown river, crossed
Life’s dreary bound?
Like thee, where shall I find another,
90 The world around?
Go to your sculptur’d tombs, ye Great,
In a’ the tinsel trash o’ state!
But by thy honest turf I’ll wait,
Thou man of worth!
95 And weep the ae best fellow’s fate one/very
E’er lay in earth.
THE EPITAPH
STOP, passenger! — my story’s brief,
And truth I shall relate, man;
I tell nae common tale o’ grief — no
100 For Matthew was a great man.
If thou uncommon merit hast,
Yet spurn’d at Fortune’s door, man,
A look of pity hither cast —
For Matthew was a poor man.
105 If thou a noble sodger art, soldier
That passest by this grave, man,
There moulders here a gallant heart —
For Matthew was a brave man.
If thou on men, their works and ways,
110 Canst throw uncommon light, man,
Here lies wha weel had won thy praise — who well
For Matthew was a bright man.
If thou, at Friendship’s sacred ca’ call
Wad life itself resign, man, would
115 Thy sympathetic tear maun fa’ — must fall
For Matthew was a kind man.
If thou art staunch without a stain,
Like the unchanging blue, man,
120 This was a kinsman o’ thy ain — own
For Matthew was a true man.
If thou hast wit, and fun, and fire,
And ne’er guid wine did fear, man, good
This was thy billie, dam, and sire — comrade
For Matthew was a queer man. roguish
125 If onie whiggish, whingin’ sot, any, whining
To blame poor Matthew dare, man,
May dool and sorrow be his lot! woe/sadness
For Matthew was a rare man.
Kinsley gives the following biographical details: ‘Matthew Henderson (1737–88) of Tannochside was a lieutenant in the Earl of Home’s regiment, and later held a civil service post in Edinburgh. He was an acquaintance of Boswell’s, one of a ‘genteel, profligate society who live like a distinct nation in Edinburgh, having constant recruits coming and going’ (Boswell in Search of a Wife 1766–1769, ed. Brady and Pottle, 1957, p. 125). Henderson was also a Mason and an antiquarian. He was forced by his convivial extravagance to sell his property, and when Burns met him in 1787 he was subsisting on a pension. He was buried in Greyfriars churchyard on 27 November 1788. What Kinsley fails to mention is that Henderson was a member of that dissident, reformist, pro-American, drouthy group, The Crochallan Fencibles. Thus in habits, interests and politics, this was a man after the Bard’s own heart. In the copy of the letter he sent to Dugald Stewart he reported that Henderson:
… was an intimate acquaintance of mine; and of all Mankind I ever knew, he was one of the first … for a nice sense of honour, a generous contemp
t for the adventitious distinctions of Men, and sterling tho’ sometimes outré Wit. – The inclosed Elegy has pleased me beyond any of my late poetic efforts. – Perhaps ’tis ‘the memory of the joys that are past,’ and a friend who is no more that biases my criticism. – It is likewise, ever since I read your Aiken on the poetic uses of Natural history, a favourite study of mine, the characters of the Vegetable and the manners of the Animal kingdom. – I regret much that I cannot have your strictures on this Poem. – How I have succeeded on the whole – if there is any incongruity in the imagery – or whether I have not omitted some apt rural paintings altogether (Letter 410).
The poem has all the energy of Burns’s elegy for Tam Sampson without, alas, the happy ending. The poet invokes landscape, fish, animals, the seasons, the sun and stars, the very grass itself into a hyperbolic chorus of pathetic fallacy which emerges from a synthesis of his readings in late eighteenth-century natural philosophy and his creative extension of the powerful elegiac poetry found in Ramsay and Fergusson, particularly in the latter’s Elegy On the Death of Scots Music, ll. 13–18 (Poems, STS, ii, 38):
Mourn ilka nymph and ilka swain,
Ilk sunny hill and dowie glen;
Let weeping streams and Naiads drain
Their fountain head;
Let echo swell the dolefu’ strain,
Since music’s dead.
Crawford, in a fine reading of this poem (pp. 211–16), sees in it a synergetic fusion of earlier eighteenth-century Scottish and English elegiac elements and also recognises, appropriate to Henderson’s character, the pronounced democratic politics of the piece:
Since all of Burns is in the background of this elegy, it is not the least surprising that the last stanza should have political and moral undertones, drawing its main effect from the sharp dichotomy of the plebian’s simple turf and the elaborate graves of the upper classes (ll. 91–6). The quiet rumination of Gray’s Elegy has taken on a Scottish tinge and become imbued with the Honest Man’s indignation against his aristocratic opponents. Even at his most traditional and writing an elegy, Burns could not avoid all trace of social criticism. It is only his very worst poems that are completely innocuous.
The Epitaph which concludes the elegy proper is only superficially divided from the sixteen stanzas that precede it. In reality, it develops all the democratic implications of ‘thy honest turf’ and ‘Thou man of worth’ until it becomes like the second half of a diptych: taken together, the two parts constitute the complete poem.
Lament of Mary Queen of Scots
on the Approach of Spring
First printed in the Edinburgh edition, 1793.
Now Nature hangs her mantle green
On every blooming tree,
And spreads her sheets o’ daisies white
Out o’er the grassy lea:
5 Now Phoebus cheers the crystal streams,
And glads the azure skies;
But nought can glad the weary wight
That fast in durance lies.
Now laverocks wake the merry morn, larks
10 Aloft on dewy wing;
The merle, in his noontide bow’r, blackbird
Makes woodland echoes ring;
The mavis wild wi’ monie a note, thrush, many
Sings drowsy day to rest:
15 In love and freedom they rejoice,
Wi’ care nor thrall opprest.
Now blooms the lily by the bank,
The primrose down the brae; hillside
The hawthorn’s budding in the glen,
20 And milk-white is the slae: sloe
The meanest hind in fair Scotland
May rove their sweets amang; among
But I, the Queen of a’ Scotland, all
Maun lie in prison strang! must, strong
25 I was the Queen o’ bonie France, beautiful
Where happy I hae been; have
Fu’ lightly rase I in the morn, rose
As blythe lay down at e’en: evening
And I’m the sovereign of Scotland,
30 And mony a traitor there; many
Yet here I lie in foreign bands,
And never-ending care.
But as for thee, thou false woman!
My sister and my fae, foe
35 Grim vengeance yet shall whet a sword wet
That thro’ thy soul shall gae! go
The weeping blood in woman’s breast
Was never known to thee;
Nor th’ balm that draps on wounds of woe drops
40 Frae woman’s pitying e’e. from, eye
My son! my son! my kinder stars
Upon thy fortune shine!
And may those pleasures gild thy reign,
That ne’er wad blink on mine! would
45 God keep thee frae thy mother’s faes, from, foes
Or turn their hearts to thee:
And where thou meet’st thy mother’s friend,
Remember him for me!
O soon, to me, may Summer suns
50 Nae mair light up the morn! no more
Nae mair, to me, the Autumn winds no more
Wave o’er the yellow corn!
And in the narrow house o’ death
Let Winter round me rave;
55 And the next flowers, that deck the Spring,
Bloom on my peaceful grave.
Composed in the early summer of 1790, the poem was sent to several correspondents of Burns, including Mrs Graham of Fintry, who was addressed as follows: ‘Whether it is that the story of our Mary Queen of Scots has a peculiar effect on the feelings of a Poet, or whether in the enclosed ballad I have succeeded beyond my usual poetic success, I know not; but it has pleased me beyond any late effort of the Muse’ (Letter 402). It is a ballad that mixes Scots and English with a dash of simple antiquated phraseology, particularly the use of ‘glads’, then ‘glad’ in the first stanza, and the rare description for a blackbird, a ‘merle’ in the second stanza. Set as spoken by Queen Mary, the highly descriptive narrative perfectly complements the mournful despair of Mary.
To Robert Graham of Fintry, Esq.
First printed in the Edinburgh edition, 1793.
Late crippled of an arm, and now a leg,
About to beg a pass for leave to beg;
Dull, listless, teas’d, dejected, and deprest,
(Nature is adverse to a cripple’s rest);
5 Will generous Graham list to his Poet’s wail? listen
(It soothes poor Misery, hearkening to her tale),
And hear him curse the light he first surveyed,
And doubly curse the luckless rhyming trade?
Thou, Nature, partial Nature! I arraign;
10 Of thy caprice maternal I complain:
The lion and the bull thy care have found,
One shakes the forests, and one spurns the ground:
Thou giv’st the ass his hide, the snail his shell,
Th’ envenomed wasp, victorious, guards his cell;
15 Thy minions, kings defend, control, devour,
In all th’ omnipotence of rule and power;
Foxes and statesmen, subtile wiles ensure;
The cit and polecat stink, and are secure;
Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug,
20 The priest and hedgehog in their robes, are snug;
Ev’n silly woman has her warlike arts,
Her tongue and eyes, her dreaded spear and darts.
But, Oh! thou bitter step-mother and hard,1
To thy poor, fenceless, naked child — the Bard!
25 A thing unteachable in world’s skill,
And half an idiot too, more helpless still;
No heels to bear him from the opening dun;
No claws to dig, his hated sight to shun;
No horns, but those by luckless Hymen worn,
30 And those, alas! not Amalthea’s horn:
No nerves olfact’ry, Mammon’s trusty cur,
Clad in rich Dulness’ comfortable fur; �
��
In naked feeling, and in aching pride,
He bears th’ unbroken blast from ev’ry side:
35 Vampyre booksellers drain him to the heart,
And scorpion critics cureless venom dart: —
Critics! — appalled, I venture on the name —
Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame:
Bloody dissectors, worse than ten Monroes!
40 He hacks to teach, they mangle to expose: —
His heart by causeless wanton malice wrung,
By blockheads’ daring into madness stung;
His well-won bays, than life itself more dear,
By miscreants torn, who ne’er one sprig must wear;
45 Foiled, bleeding, tortur’d in th’ unequal strife,
The hapless Poet flounders on thro’ life;
Till fled each hope that once his bosom fired,
And fled each Muse that glorious once inspired,
Low-sunk in squalid, unprotected age,
50 Dead even resentment for his injured page,
He heeds or feels no more the ruthless Critic’s rage!
So, by some hedge, the generous steed deceased,
For half-starv’d snarling curs a dainty feast;
By toil and famine wore to skin and bone,
55 Lies, senseless of each tugging bitch’s son.
O Dulness! portion of the truly blest!
Calm sheltered haven of eternal rest!
Thy sons ne’er madden in the fierce extremes
Of Fortune’s polar frost, or torrid beams.
60 If mantling high she fills the golden cup,
With sober selfish ease they sip it up:
