Читать книгу The Canongate Burns - Robert Burns - Страница 25

Inscribed to R. Aiken, Esq.

First published in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,

The short and simple annals of the Poor.

GRAY.

My lov’d, my honor’d, much respected friend!

No mercenary Bard his homage pays;

With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,

My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:

5 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,

The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene;

The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,

What Aiken in a Cottage would have been;

Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier there I ween! trust

10 November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh; blows, whistling wind

The short’ning winter-day is near a close;

The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; dirty, from, plough

The black’ning trains o’ craws to their repose: crows

The toil-worn COTTER frae his labour goes, from

15 This night his weekly moil is at an end, toil/drudgery

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, a two-mouthed pick

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,

And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend. homeward

At length his lonely Cot appears in view, cottage

20 Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlan, stacher through children, totter

To meet their Dad, wi’ flichterin noise and glee. fluttering

His wee bit ingle, blinkan bonilie, fire, burning nicely

His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty Wifie’s smile, fireside, wife’s

25 The lisping infant, prattling on his knee,

Does a’ his weary kiaugh and care beguile, anxiety

And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil.

Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, by-and-by, kids, dropping

At Service out, amang the Farmers roun’; among, round

30 Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin work, shepherd, attentively run

A cannie errand to a neebor town: private, neighbour

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,

In youthfu’ bloom, Love sparkling in her e’e, eye

Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown, home, show, fine

35 Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, sore-, wages

To help her Parents dear, if they in hardship be.

With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet,

And each for other’s weelfare kindly spiers: welfare, inquires

The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d fleet;

40 Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears. news

The Parents partial eye their hopeful years;

Anticipation forward points the view;

The Mother, wi’ her needle and her sheers, scissors

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new; makes old clothes, almost, well

45 The Father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.

Their Master’s and their Mistress’s command

The youngkers a’ are warned to obey; youngsters all

And mind their labors wi’ an eydent hand, diligent

And ne’er, tho’ out o’ sight, to jauk or play: fool around

50 ‘And O! be sure to fear the LORD always! always

And mind your duty, duly, morn and night!

Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray, go

Implore His counsel and assisting might:

They never sought in vain that sought the LORD aright.’

55 But hark! a rap comes gently to the door;

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same. who knows

Tells how a neebor lad came o’er the moor, neighbour

To do some errands, and convoy her hame. home

The wily Mother sees the conscious flame

60 Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek; eye

With heart-struck anxious care, enquires his name,

While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak; almost/partly

Weel-pleas’d the mother hears, it’s nae wild, no

worthless Rake.

With kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben; inside

65 A strappan youth, he takes the Mother’s eye;

Blythe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill taen; taken

The Father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. talks, ploughs, cattle

The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy,

But blate and laithfu’, scarce can weel behave; shy, hesitating, well

70 The Mother, wi’ a woman’s wiles, can spy cunning

What makes the youth sae bashfu’ and sae grave; so

Weel-pleas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave. well-, child’s, the others

O happy love! where love like this is found:

O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!

75 I’ve pacè d much this weary, mortal round,

And sage EXPERIENCE bids me this declare —

‘If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,

One cordial in this melancholy Vale,

‘Tis when a youthful, loving, modest Pair,

80 In other’s arms, breathe out the tender tale

Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev’ning gale.’

Is there, in human form, that bears a heart —

A wretch! a villain! lost to love and truth!

That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art,

85 Betray sweet Jenny’s unsuspecting youth?

Curse on his perjur’d arts! dissembling, smoothe!

Are Honor, Virtue, Conscience, all exil’d?

Is there no Pity, no relenting Ruth, sorrow

Points to the Parents fondling o’er their Child?

90 Then paints the ruin’d Maid, and their distraction wild?

But now the Supper crowns their simple board,

The halesome Porritch, chief o’ SCOTIA’S food; wholesome porridge

The soupe their only Hawkie does afford, drink/milk, cow

That, ‘yont the hallan snugly chows her cood; beyond, partition, chews

95 The Dame brings forth, in complimental mood,

To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck, fell; well-matured cheese, tasty

And aft he’s prest, and aft he ca’s it guid; often, asked, calls, good

The frugal Wifie, garrulous, will tell, wife

How ‘twas a towmond auld, sin’ Lint was i’ the bell. 12 months old, flax, flower

100 The chearfu’ Supper done, wi’ serious face,

They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;

The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace,

The big ha’-Bible, ance his Father’s pride. hall Bible, once

His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,

105 His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; grey sidelocks

Those strains that once did sweet in ZION glide,

He wales a portion with judicious care,

‘And let us worship GOD!’ he says, with solemn air.

They chant their artless notes in simple guise,

110 They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;

Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise,

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;

Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame, fans

The sweetest far of SCOTIA’S holy lays:

115 Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;

The tickl’d ears no heart-felt raptures raise;

Nae unison hae they, with our CREATOR’S praise. no, have

The priest-like Father reads the sacred page,

How Abram was the Friend of God on high;

120 Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage

With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;

Or, how the royal Bard did groaning lye

Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;

Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;

125 Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire;

Or other Holy Seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Perhaps the Christian Volume is the theme:

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;

How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,

130 Had not on Earth whereon to lay His head;

How His first followers and servants sped;

The Precepts sage they wrote to many a land:

How he, who lone in Patmos banishè d,

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,

135 And heard great Bab’lon’s doompronounc’d by Heaven’s command.

Then kneeling down to HEAVEN’S ETERNAL KING,

The Saint, the Father, and the Husband prays:

Hope ‘springs exulting on triumphant wing,’1

That thus they all shall meet in future days,

140 There, ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,

Together hymning their CREATOR’S praise,

In such society, yet still more dear;

While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.

145 Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s pride,

In all the pomp of method, and of art;

When men display to congregations wide

Devotion’s ev’ry grace, except the heart!

The POWER, incens’d, the Pageant will desert,

150 The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;

But haply, in some Cottage far apart,

May hear, well-pleas’d, the language of the Soul,

And in His Book of Life the Inmates poor enroll.

Then homeward all take off their sev’ral way;

155 The youngling Cottagers retire to rest: youthful

The Parent-pair their secret homage pay,

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,

That ‘He who stills the raven’s clam’rous nest,

‘And decks the lily fair in flow’ry pride,

160 ‘Would, in the way His Wisdom sees the best,

‘For them and for their little ones provide;

‘But, chiefly, in their hearts with Grace Divine preside’.

From Scenes like these, old SCOTIA’S grandeur springs,

That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad:

165 Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

‘An honest man’s the noble work of GOD’;2

And certes, in fair Virtue’s heavenly road, verily

The Cottage leaves the Palace far behind;

What is a lordling’s pomp? – a cumbrous load,

170 Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,

Studied in arts of Hell, in wickedness refin’d!

O SCOTIA! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

175 Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!

And O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent

From Luxury’s contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe’er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous Populace may rise the while,

180 And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov’d ISLE.

O THOU! who pour’d the patriotic tide,

That stream’d thro’ WALLACE’S undaunted heart,

Who dar’d to, nobly, stem tyrannic pride,

Or nobly die, the second glorious part:

185 (The Patriot’s GOD, peculiarly Thou art,

His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)

O never, never SCOTIA’S realm desert;

But still the Patriot, and the Patriot-bard

In bright succession raise, her Ornament and Guard!

As Kinsley noted (Vol. III, p. 112): ‘What appealed to Burns contemporaries … was the naturalism and the moral tone of TC’s SN. The English Review (Feb. 1787) thought it the best poem in the Kilmarnock book, offering ‘a domestic picture of rustic simplicity, natural tenderness, and innocent passion that must please every reader whose feelings are not perverted’. As Henry Mackenzie’s and Robert Heron’s reviews show (See Low, The Critical Heritage), conformist Scots were only too eager to build up such English pieties.

Unfazed that a ‘heaven-taught’ ploughman should be so canonically allusive, we find, embryonically in these Tory sentimentalists, the enormous Victorian enthusiasm for a poem which seemed, under the growing threat of the anarchic urban, industrial crowd, to offer the security and succour of a pietistically all-accepting rural folk. (See Andrew Noble, ‘Some Versions of Scottish Pastoral: The Literati and the Tradition’ in Order in Space and Society, ed. Markus (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 263–310.

Twentieth-century critics have mainly been less easy with the poem. In his masterly reading Daiches compares it unfavourably to Fergusson’s formally Spenserian precursor, The Farmer’s Ingle. Compared to Fergusson’s consistent vernacular, Daiches finds the language and voice uneven in the Burns poem. The problem Daiches believes is that, beginning with its initial homage to Robert Aitken: ‘What Aitken in a Cottage would have been;/Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier there I ween’, a most unlikely tale, the poem is muddled, in parts, especially the ruined maid sequence, by Burns too consciously looking over his shoulder to please genteel Edinburgh.’ As he further notes:

There is probably no poem of Burns in which the introduction of an artificial personality has spoiled a potentially fine work to the extent that it has in The Cotter’s Saturday Night. The main trouble is that the poet has kept shifting his attitude, and with it his diction, between several incompatible positions. He is at one and the same time the sympathetic, realistic observer; at still another he is the sophisticated moralist acting as a guide showing off his rustic character for the benefit of a sentimental, genteel audience (p. 149).

Daiches is also rightly concerned with the semi, if not wholly, detached nature of the last two stanzas: ‘But he overdoes the patriotic note, and in his final stanza seems to forget altogether the real theme of his poem.’ Perhaps subconsciously, Burns did realise that some of the poem was complicit with values he detested and this invocation of a national, contractually governed common people was his attempt to deny some of the sentiments which preceded his inevitably inorganic conclusion. Certainly he is echoing the national spirit of Fergusson’s The Farmer’s Ingle:

On sicken food has mony doughty deed

By Caledonia’s ancestors been done;

By this did mony wright fu’ weirlike bleed

In brulzies frae the dawn to set o’ sun:

’Twas this that brac’d their gardies stiff and strang

That bent the deidly yew in antient days,

Laid Denmark’s daring sons on yird alang,

Gar’d Scottish thristles bang the Roman bays;

For near our crest their heads they doughtna raise.

It would be hard to overestimate Fergusson’s influence in both national style and substance on Burns. From Fergusson, albeit often more elegiacally expressed, come the sense of the food, drink, music and personages that make up the Scottish spirit. Burns also understood that Fergusson was, if covertly, a profoundly political poet. Like himself, Fergusson was socially displaced because he also existed in a hierarchical world between masters and men. Their political poetry, then, had to be ironic, oblique, comically masked. In defining Fergusson as ‘bauld and slee’ (bold and sly) Burns, knowingly, defined himself. As we have already seen, Fergusson’s brilliant Hame Content: A Satire with its denunciation of those Europhiliac, decadent aristocrats who will not remain responsibly at home was put, in The Twa Dogs, to equally brilliant use. These lines from the same Fergusson poem should remind us simultaneously of the relatively uneven failure of The Cotter’s Saturday Night and the greatness in representing the harshness, beauty and injustice in the life of the common people found in so much of Burns’s other poetry, significantly due to Fergusson’s influence on him:

Now whan the Dog-day heats begin

To birsel and to peel the skin,

May I lie streetkit at my ease,

Beneath the caller shady trees,

(Far frae the din o’ Borrowstown,)

Whar water plays the haughs bedown,

To jouk the simmer’s rigor there,

And breath a while the caller air

’Mang herds, an’ honest cotter fock

That till the farm and feed the flock;

Careless o’ mair, wha never fash

To lade their kist wi’ useless cash

But thank the gods for what they’ve sent

O’ health eneugh, and blyth content,

An’ pith, that helps them to stravaig

Owr ilka cleugh and ilka craig,

Unkend to a’ the weary granes

That aft arise frae gentler banes,

On easy-chair that pamper’d lie,

Wi’ banefu’ viands gustit high,

And turn and fald their weary clay,

To rax and gaunt the live-lang day.

1 Pope’s Windsor Forest, R.B.

2 Pope’s Essay on Man, R.B.