Читать книгу Robert Burns: How To Know Him - William Allan Neilson - Страница 8
POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY
ОглавлениеLament in rhyme, lament in prose,
Wi' saut tears tricklin' down your nose, salt
Our bardie's fate is at a close,
Past a' remead; remedy
The last sad cape-stane of his woes—cope-stone
Poor Mailie's dead!
It's no the loss o' warl's gear worldly lucre
That could sae bitter draw the tear,
Or mak our bardie, dowie, wear downcast
The mourning weed:
He's lost a friend and neibor dear
In Mailie dead.
Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him;
A lang half-mile she could descry him;
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
She ran wi' speed:
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him
Than Mailie dead.
I wat she was a sheep o' sense, wot
An' could behave hersel wi' mense; manners
I'll say't, she never brak a fence
Thro' thievish greed.
Our bardie, lanely, keeps the spence parlor
Sin' Mailie's dead. Since
Or, if he wanders up the howe, glen
Her living image in her yowe ewe-lamb
Comes bleating to him, owre the knowe, knoll
For bits o' bread,
An' down the briny pearls rowe roll
For Mailie dead.
She was nae get o' moorland tups, issue
Wi' tawted ket, an' hairy hips; matted fleece
For her forbears were brought in ships
Frae 'yont the Tweed;
A bonnier fleesh ne'er cross'd the clips fleece, shears
Than Mailie's, dead.
Wae worth the man wha first did shape Woe to
That vile wanchancie thing—a rape! dangerous
It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, growl
Wi' chokin' dread;
An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape
For Mailie dead.
O a' ye bards on bonnie Doon!
An' wha on Ayr your chanters tune! bagpipes
Come, join the melancholious croon
O' Robin's reed;
His heart will never get aboon! rejoice
His Mailie's dead!
How long he continued to mourn for Ellison Begbie, it is hard to say; but the three following songs, inspired, it would seem, by three different girls, testify at once to his power of recuperation and the rapid maturing of his talent. All seem to have been written between the date of his return from Irvine and the death of his father.
