Читать книгу The Essential Works of Robert G. Ingersoll - Robert Green Ingersoll - Страница 155

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There is no time to follow the steps of Burns from old Alloway, by the Bonnie Doon in the clay-built hut, where the January wind blew hansel in on Robin—to Mt. Oliphant, with its cold and stingy soil, the hard factor, whose letters made the children weep—working in the fields, or tired with "The thresher's weary flinging tree," where he was thrilled, for the first time with love's sweet pain that set his heart to music.

To Lochlea, still giving wings to thought—still working in the unproductive fields, Lochlea where his father died, and reached the rest that life denied.

To Mossgiel, where Burns reached the top and summit of his art and wrote like one enrapt, inspired. Here he met and loved and gave to immortality his Highland Mary.

To Edinburgh and fame, and back to Mauchline to Jean Armour and honor, the noblest deed of all his life.

To Ellisland, by the winding Nith.

To Dumfries, a poor exciseman, wearing out his heart in the disgusting details of degrading drudgery—suspected of treason because he preferred Washington to Pitt—because he sympathized with the French Revolution—because he was glad that the American colonies had become a free nation.

At a banquet once, being asked to drink the health of Pitt, Burns said: "I will give you a better toast—George Washington." A little while after, when they wanted him to drink to the success of the English arms, Burns said: "No; I will drink this: May their success equal the justice of their cause." He sent three or four little cannon to the French Convention, because he sympathized with the French Revolution, and because of these little things, his love of liberty, of freedom and justice, at Dumfries he was suspected of being a traitor, and, as a result of these trivial things, as a result of that suspicion, Burns was obliged to join the Dumfries volunteers.

How pitiful that the author of "Scots wha hae with Wallace bled," should be thought an enemy of Scotland!

Poor Burns! Old and broken before his time—surrounded by the walking lumps of Dumfries' clay!

To appease the anger of his fellow-citizens—to convince them that he was a patriot, he actually joined the Dumfries volunteers—bought his uniform on credit—amount about seven pounds—was unable to pay—was threatened with arrest and a jail by Matthew Penn.

These threats embittered his last hours.

A little while before his death, he said: "Do not let that awkward squad—the Dumfries volunteers—fire over my grave." We have a true insight into what his feelings were. But they fired. They were bound to fire or die.

The last words uttered by Robert Burns were these: "That damned scoundrel Matthew Penn."

Burns had another art, the art of ending—of stopping at the right place. Nothing is more difficult than this. It is hard to end a play—to get the right kind of roof on a house. Not one story-teller in a thousand knows just the spot where the rocket should explode. They go on talking after the stick has fallen.

Burns wrote short poems, and why? All great poems are short. There cannot be a long poem any more than there can be a long joke. I believe the best example of an ending perfectly accomplished you will find in his "Vision."

There comes into his house, into that "auld clay biggin," his muse, the spirit of a beautiful woman, and tells him what he can do, and what he can't do, as a poet. He has a long talk with her and now the thing is how to get her out of the house. You may think that it is an easy thing. It is easy to get yourself into difficulty, but not to get out.

I was struck with the beautiful manner in which Burns got that angel out of the house.

Nothing could be happier than the ending of the "Vision"—the leave-taking of the Muse:

"And wear thou this, she solemn said,

And bound the holly round my head:

The polished leaves and berries red

Did rustling play;

And, like a passing thought she fled.

In light away."

How that man rose above all his fellows in death! Do you know, there is something wonderful in death. What a repose! What a piece of sculpture! The common man dead looks royal; a genius dead, sublime.

When a few years ago I visited all the places where Burns had been, from the little house of clay with one room where he was born, to the little house with one room where he now sleeps, I thought of this. Yes, I visited them all, all the places made immortal by his genius, the field where love first touched his heart, the field where he ploughed up the home of the Mouse. I saw the cottage where Robert and Jean first lived as man and wife, and walked on "the banks and braes of Bonnie Doon." And when I stood by his grave, I said: This man was a radical, a real genuine man. This man believed in the dignity of labor, in the nobility of the useful. This man believed in human love, in making a heaven here, in judging men by their deeds instead of creeds and titles. This man believed in the liberty of the soul, of thought and speech. This man believed in the sacred rights of the individual; he sympathized with the suffering and oppressed. This man had the genius to change suffering and toil into song, to enrich poverty, to make a peasant feel like a prince of the blood, to fill the lives of the lowly with love and light. This man had the genius to make robes of glory out of squalid rags. This man had the genius to make Cleopatras, and Sapphos and Helens out of the freckled girls of the villages and fields—and he had the genius to make Auld Ayr, and Bonnie Doon, and Sweet Afton and the Winding Nith murmur the name of Robert Burns forever.

This man left a legacy of glory to Scotland and the whole world; he enriched our language, and with a generous hand scattered the gems of thought. This man was the companion of poverty, and wept the tears of grief, and yet he has caused millions to shed the happy tears of joy.

His heart blossomed in a thousand songs—songs for all times and all seasons—suited to every experience of the heart—songs for the dawn of love—for the glance and clasp and kiss of courtship—for "favors secret, sweet and precious"—for the glow and flame, the ecstasy and rapture of wedded life—songs of parting and despair—songs of hope and simple joy—songs for the vanished days—songs for birth and burial—songs for wild war's deadly blast, and songs for gentle peace—songs for the dying and the dead—songs for labor and content—songs for the spinning wheel, the sickle and the plow—songs for sunshine and for storm, for laughter and for tears—songs that will be sung as long as language lives and passion sways the heart of man.

And when I was at his birth-place, at that little clay house where he was born, standing in that sacred place, I wrote these lines:

Though Scotland boasts a thousand names,

Of patriot, king and peer,

The noblest, grandest of them all,

Was loved and cradled here.

Here lived the gentle peasant-prince,

The loving cotter-king,

Compared with whom the greatest lord

Is but a titled thing.

'Tis but a cot roofed in with straw,

A hovel made of clay;

One door shuts out the snow and storm,

One window greets the day;

And yet I stand within this room,

And hold all thrones in scorn;

For here beneath this lowly thatch,

Love's sweetest bard was born.

Within this hallowed hut I feel

Like one who clasps a shrine,

When the glad lips at last have touched

The something deemed divine.

And here the world through all the years,

As long as day returns,

The tribute of its love and tears,

Will pay to Robert Burns.