THOUGHTS After a visit to the grave of Burns Too frail to keep the lofty vow That must have followed when his brow He faltered, drifted to and fro, Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng Our minds when, lingering all too long, Over the grave of Burns we hung In social grief Indulged as if it were a wrong But, leaving each unquiet theme Where gentlest judgments may misdeem, And prompt to welcome every gleam Of good and fair, Let us beside this limpid Stream Breathe hopeful air. Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight; When to the consciousness of right 12 18 His course was true, When Wisdom prospered in his sight, And virtue grew. Yes, freely let our hearts expand, Our pleasure varying at command How oft inspired must he have trod Or in his nobly-pensive mood, The Rustic sate. Proud thoughts that Image overawes, Before it humbly let us pause, And ask of Nature, from what cause, And by what rules She trained her Burns to win applause Through busiest street and loneliest glen Are felt the flashes of his pen; He rules 'mid winter snows, and when Bees fill their hives; Deep in the general heart of men His power survives. 24 30 36 42 What need of fields in some far clime Shall dwell together till old Time Folds up his wings? Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven, Effaced for ever. But why to Him confine the prayer, When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear With all that live?— The best of what we do and are, 1803. 1845. 54 60 66 William Wordsworth. BURNS WILD rose of Alloway! my thanks; Thou 'mind'st me of that autumn noon Like thine, beneath the thorn-tree's bough, We 've crossed the winter sea, and thou And will not thy death-doom be mine The doom of all things wrought of clay? And withered my life's leaf like thine, Wild rose of Alloway? Not so his memory for whose sake My bosom bore thee far and longHis, who a humbler flower could make Immortal as his song, The memory of Burns-a name That calls, when brimmed her festal cup, A nation's glory and her shame, In silent sadness up. A nation's glory-be the rest Forgot-she's canonized his mind, And it is joy to speak the best We may of humankind. I've stood beside the cottage bed Where the bard-peasant first drew breath; And I have stood beside the pile, His monument-that tells to Heaven The homage of earth's proudest isle To that bard-peasant given, 28 8 12 16 20 Bid thy thoughts hover o'er that spot, The pride that lifted Burns from earth, And if despondency weigh down There have been loftier themes than his, And lays lit up with Poesy's Purer and holier fires: 48 Yet read the names that know not death; And few have won a greener wreath Than that which binds his hair. His is that language of the heart In which the answering heart would speak, Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, Or the smile light the cheek; And his that music to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time, 52 46 44 40 36 |