James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
July 21On the Death of Burns
By William Roscoe (1753–1831)R
Thy sheltered valleys proudly spread,—
And, Scotia, pour thy thousand rills,
And wave thy heaths with blossoms red;
But, ah! what poet now shall tread
Thy airy heights, thy woodland reign,
Since he, the sweetest bard is dead,
That ever breathed the soothing strain?
As clear thy streams may speed along,
As bright thy summer suns may glow,
As gayly charm thy feathery throng;
But now unheeded is the song,
And dull and lifeless all around—
For his wild harp lies all unstrung,
And cold the hand that waked its sound.
In arts, in arms, thy sons excel;
Though beauty in thy daughters’ eyes,
And health in every feature dwell;
Yet who shall now their praises tell
In strains impassioned, found, and free,
Since he no more the song shall swell
To love, and liberty, and thee!
His hapless youth why didst thou view?
For all thy joys to him were dear,
And all his vows to thee were due;
Nor greater bliss his bosom knew,
In opening youth’s delightful prime,
Than when thy favoring ear he drew
To listen to his chanted rhyme.
To him were all with rapture fraught;
He heard with joy the tempest rise
That waked him to sublimer thought;
And oft thy winding dells he sought,
Where wild flowers poured their rathe perfume,
And with sincere devotion brought
To thee the summer’s earliest bloom.
His unprotected youth enjoyed—
His limbs inured to early toil,
His days with early hardships tried!
And more to mark the gloomy void,
And bid him feel his misery,
Before his infant eyes would glide
Day-dreams of immortality.
With sinewy arm he turned the soil,
Sunk with the evening sun to rest,
And met at morn his earliest smile.
Waked by his rustic pipe meanwhile,
The powers of fancy came along,
And soothed his lengthened hours of toil
With native wit and sprightly song.
When vigorous health from labor springs,
And bland contentment soothes the bed,
And sleep his ready opiate brings;
And hovering round on airy wings
Float the light forms of young desire,
That of unutterable things
The soft and shadowy hope inspire.
Bid brighter phantoms round him dance;
Let flattery spread her viewless snare,
And fame attract his vagrant glance;
Let sprightly pleasure too advance,
Unveiled her eyes, unclasped her zone—
Till, lost in love’s delirious trance,
He scorns the joys his youth has known.
Expanding all the bloom of soul;
And mirth concentre all her rays,
And point them from the sparkling bowl;
And let the careless moments roll
In social pleasures unconfined,
And confidence that spurns control,
Unlock the inmost springs of mind:
Where elegance with splendor vies,
Or science bids her favored throng
To more refined sensations rise;
Beyond the peasant’s humbler joys,
And freed from each laborious strife,
There let him learn the bliss to prize
That waits the sons of polished life.
With every impulse of delight,
Dash from his lips the cup of joy,
And shroud the scene in shades of night;
And let despair with wizard light
Disclose the yawning gulf below,
And pour incessant on his sight
Her spectred ills and shapes of woe;
With sorrowing heart and streaming eyes,
In silent grief where droops her head
The partner of his early joys;
And let his infants’ tender cries
His fond parental succour claim,
And bid him hear in agonies
A husband’s and a father’s name.
His high reluctant spirit bends;
In bitterness of soul he bleeds,
Nor longer with his fate contends.
An idiot laugh the welkin rends
As genius thus degraded lies;
Till pitying Heaven the veil extends
That shrouds the poet’s ardent eyes.
Thy sheltered valleys proudly spread,
And, Scotia, pour thy thousand rills,
And wave thy heaths with blossoms red;
But never more shall poet tread
Thy airy heights, thy woodland reign—
Since he, the sweetest bard, is dead
That ever breathed the soothing strain.