A Persian Pearl, and Other Essays

ROBERT BURNS.

It is difficult to account for a genius like Robert Burns. His life and work seem to defy the laws of heredity and environment alike. The beasts of the field were scarcely bound closer to the soil than were the ancestors from which he sprang; and from his early infancy he was forced to follow the stony path his father trod before. As a mere child, he learned how hard it is to sustain life in the face of an unfriendly nature and a cruel, bitter world. He was early bred to toil; not the work that gives strength and health, but the hard, constant, manual labor that degrades and embitters, deforms and twists and stunts the body and the soul alike. Burns was denied even the brief years of childhood—those few, short years upon which most of us look back from our disappointments and cares as the one bright spot in a gray and level plain.

It is not alone by the works he has left us that Robert Burns is to be truly judged. Fortune endowed him with a wondrous brain and a still rarer and greater gift—a tender, loving, universal heart; but as if she grudged him these and sought to destroy or stunt their power, she cast his lot in a social and religious environment as hard and forbidding as the cold and sterile soil of his native land; and from these surroundings alone he was obliged to draw the warmth and color and sunshine that should have come from loving hearts, generous bounties, and bright, blue southern skies. In measuring the power and character of Robert Burns, we must remember the hard and cruel conditions of his life, and judge of his great achievements in the light of these.

The ways of destiny have ever been beyond the ken of man; now and then, at rare, long intervals, she descends upon the earth, and in her arms she bears disguised a precious gift, which she lavished upon a blind, unwilling world. She passes by the gorgeous palaces and beautiful abodes of men, and drops the treasure in a manger or a hut; she comes again to take it back from a world that knew it not and cast it out; and again, she seeks it not among the strong and great, but in the hovel of the poor, the prison pen, or perhaps upon the scaffold or the block.

Measured by the standards of our day and generation, the life of Robert Burns was a failure and mistake. He went back to the great common Mother as naked of all the gilded trappings and baubles, which men call wealth, as when she first placed the struggling infant on its mother’s breast.

Robert Burns was not a “business man”; he was not one of Dumfries’ “first citizens”—in the measure of that day and this; he was one of its last if not its worst. He had no stock in a corporation and no interest in a syndicate or trust. He had neither a bank nor bank account. He never endowed a library, a museum, or a university. He was a singer of songs,—a dreamer of dreams. He was poor, improvident, intemperate, and according to the Scottish creed, immoral and irreligious. In spite of his great intellect he was doubted, neglected and despised. He died in destitution and despair; but the great light of his genius, which his neighbors could not see or comprehend, has grown brighter and clearer as the years have rolled away. A beautiful mausoleum now holds his once neglected ashes; monuments have been reared to his memory wherever worth is known and fame preserved; while millions of men and women, the greatest and the humblest of the world alike, have felt their own heartstrings moved and stirred in unison with the music of this immortal bard, whose song was the breath of Nature,—the sweetest, tenderest melody that ever came from that rarest instrument—the devoted poet’s soul.

The great masterpieces of his genius were not created in the pleasant study of a home of refinement, luxury, and ease, but were born in the fields, the farm yard, the stable; while the “monarch peasant” was bending above the humblest tasks that men pursue for bread. Only the most ordinary education was within the reach of this child of toil, and the world’s great storehouses of learning, literature, and art were sealed forever from his sight; and yet, with only the rude peasants, with whom his life was spent, the narrow setting of bleak fields and grey hills, which was the small stage on which he moved, and the sterile Scotch dialect with which to paint, he stirred the hearts of men with the sweetest, highest, purest melody that has ever moved the human soul.

Olive Schreiner tells of an artist whose pictures shone with the richest, brightest glow. His admirers gazed upon the canvas and wondered where he found the colors—so much rarer than any they had ever seen before. Other artists searched the earth, but could find no tints like his; he died with the secret in his breast. And when they undressed him to put his grave-clothes on, they found an old wound, hard and jagged above his heart; and still they wondered where he found the coloring for his work. Robert Burns, perhaps more than any other man who ever lived, taught the great truth that poets are not made but born; that the richest literature, the brightest gems of art, even the most pleasing earthly prospects are less than one spark of the divine fire, which alone can kindle the true light. Robert Burns like all great artists, taught the world that the beauty of the landscape, and the grandeur and pathos of life depend, not upon the external objects that nature has chanced to place before our view, but upon the soul of the artist, which alone can really see and interpret the manifold works of the great author, beside which all human effort is so poor and weak.

Millet looked at the French peasants standing in their wooden shoes, digging potatoes from the earth and pausing to bow reverently at the sounding of the Angelus, and saw in this simple life, so close to Nature’s heart, more beauty and pathos and poetry than all the glittering courts of Europe could produce. And Robert Burns, whose broad mind and sympathetic soul made him kin to all living things, had no need to see the splendor and gaiety of wealth and power, to visit foreign shores and unknown lands; but the flowers, the heather, the daisies, the bleak fields, the pelting rains, the singing birds, the lowing cattle, and above all, the simple country folk seen through his eyes, and felt by his soul, and held in his all-embracing heart, were covered with a beauty and a glory that all the artificial world could not create, and that his genius has endowed with immortal life. Robert Burns did not borrow his philosophy from the books, his humanity from the church, or his poetry from the schools. Luckily for us he escaped all these, and unfettered and untaught, went straight to the soul of Nature to learn from the great source, the harmony and beauty and unity that pervades the whole; and he painted these with colors drawn from his great human heart. His universal sympathy gave him an insight into life that students of science and philosophy can never reach. Contemplating Nature, and seeing her generous bounties lavished alike on all her children, he could not but contrast this with the selfishness and inhumanity of man, which crushes out the weak and helpless and builds up the great and strong. Burns was a natural leveler, and while men still believed in the “divine right of kings,” he preached that “man was the divine King of rights.” None knew better than he the injustice of the social life in which he lived, and in which we live to-day. Burns knew, as all men of intelligence understand, that worldly goods are not, and never have been given as a reward of either brains or merit.

It’s hardly in a body’s power
To keep at times, frae being sour,
To see how things are shared;
How best o’chiels are whiles in want
While coofs on countless thousands rant
And ken na how to wair’t.

The immortal singer of songs, and all his descendants, received infinitely less for all the works of his genius than an ordinary gambler often gets for one sale of something that he never owned, or one purchase of something that he never bought; and it is doubtful if all the masterpieces of the world in art, in literature, and in science, ever brought as much cash to those whose great, patient brains have carefully and honestly wrought that the earth might be richer and better and brighter, as has been often “made” by one inferior speculator upon a single issue of watered stock.

Living in the midst of aristocracy and privilege and caste, Burns was a democrat that believed in the equality of man. It required no books or professors, or theories to teach him the injustice of the social conditions under which the world has ever lived. Here, as elsewhere, he looked to the heart—a teacher infinitely more honest and reliable than the brain.

If I’m design’d yon lordling’s slave,
By Nature’s law design’d;
Why was an independent wish
E’er planted in my mind?

If not, why am I subject to
His cruelty, or scorn?
Or why has man the will and pow’r
To make his fellow mourn?

Preachers and authors and teachers, judges and professors and lawyers, have been employed for ages to teach the justice of slavery and the folly and crime of equal rights; but through all quibbles and evasions, this question of Burns, straight from the heart, as well as the head, shows that all these excuses are but snares and cheats. The voice of the French Revolution could not fail to move a soul like that of Robert Burns. This great struggle for human liberty came upon the world with almost the suddenness of an earthquake, and with much of its terrors, too. Here the poor and the oppressed felt the first substantial hope for freedom that had pierced the long, dark centuries since history told the acts of men. To the oppressors and the powerful, who hated liberty then as they ever have, before and since, it was a wild, dread threat of destruction and ruin to their precious “rights.” When the struggle commenced, Burns was enjoying the munificent salary of Fifty pounds a year as a whisky gauger in the village of Dumfries. He had already spent a winter in Edinburgh, and had been feted and dined by the aristocracy and culture of Scotland’s capital without losing his head, although at no small risk. An acquaintance and entertainer of the nobility and an incumbent of a lucrative office, there was but one thing for Burns to do; this was to condemn the Revolution and lend his trenchant pen to the oppressor’s cause; but this course he flatly refused to take. He openly espoused the side of the people, and wrote the “Tree of Liberty,” one of his most stirring songs, in its defense.

Upon this tree there grows sic fruit,
Its virtues a’can tell man;
It raises man aboon the brute,
It mak’s him ken himsel’ man.
Gif ance the peasant taste a bit,
He’s greater than a lord man.

King Louis thought to cut it down
When it was unco sma’ man;
For this the watchman cracked his crown,
Cut aff his head an’ a’ man.

Even these words are not strong enough to express his love for natural liberty and his distrust of those forms and institutions which over and over again have crushed the priceless gem they pretend to protect.

A fig for those by law protected!
Liberty’s a glorious feast!
Courts for cowards were erected,
Churches built to please the priest.

Even higher and broader was Burns’ view of equality and right. He stood on a serene height, where he looked upon all the strife and contention of individuals and states, and dreamed of a perfect harmony and universal order, where men and Nations alike should be at peace, and the world united in one grand common brotherhood, where the fondest wish of each should be the highest good of all. These beautiful, prophetic lines seem to speak of a day as distant now as when Burns wrote them down a hundred years ago. But still, all men that love the human race will ever hope, and work, and say with him:

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth
May bear the gree, and a’ that;
For a’ that, and a’ that,
It’s coming yet, for a’ that,
That man to man, the warld o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.

It is perhaps as a singer of songs that the literary fame of Burns will longest be preserved. No other poet has ever breathed such music from his soul. His melodies are as sweet and pure as the bubbling spring; and as natural and spontaneous as ever came from the throat of the nightingale or lark. These songs could not be made. The feeling and passion that left his soul bore this music as naturally as the zephyr that has fanned the strings of the Æolian harp. The meter of these songs was not learned by scanning Latin verse, or studying the dry rules that govern literary art, but it was born of the regular pulse beats, which in the heart of Nature’s poets are as smooth and unstudied as the rippling laughter of her purling brooks.

John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snow;
But blessing on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo.

John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill tegither,
And mony a canty day, John,
We’ve had wi’ ane anither;
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we’ll go,
And sleep tegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo.

Although a plough boy and surrounded by the grime and dirt that come from contact with the soil, still even here Burns found material for music and poetry that will live as long as human hearts endure; for, though the sky may be warmer and bluer on the Mediterranean shore than where it domes the Scottish hills and crags, still the same heaven bends above them both, and the same infinite mysteries are hidden in their unfathomed depths. The tragedy of death is alike, whether defying the power of a Prince, or entering the home of the humblest peasant to bring the first moments of relief and rest. The miracle of life, whether wrought by Nature on the rich couch of the Queen or the unwatched pallet of the peasant, is the same mystery, ever new, ever old, appealing ever to the heart of man. The affections and passions,—those profound feelings that Nature planted deep in the being of all sentient things, and on whose strength all life depends,—these are the deepest and purest as we leave the conventions and trappings of the artificial world, and draw nearer to the heart of the great Universal power. With the sky above, the fields around, and all Nature throbbing and teeming with pulsing life, but one thing more was needed to make harmony and music, and that was Robert Burns.

The old story of human love was sung by him a thousand times and in a thousand varying moods, as never love was sung before. It mattered not that his melodies breathed of rustic scenes, of country maids, and of plain untutored hearts that beat as Nature made them feel, unfettered by the restraints and cords of an artificial life. Transport his Mary to a gorgeous palace, and deck her fair form with the richest treasures of the earth and bring to her side the proudest noble that ever paid homage to a princess, and no singer,—not even Burns himself,—could make a melody like the matchless music that he sung to Highland Mary.

How sweetly bloom’d the gay green birk,
How rich the hawthorn’s blossom;
As underneath their fragrant shade,
I clasp’d her to my bosom!

The golden hours, on angel wings,
Flew o’er me and my dearie;
For dear to me as light and life
Was my sweet Highland Mary.

All the conventions and baubles and spangles which fashion and custom use to adorn the fair could only have cheapened and made vulgar the rustic maiden that moved Burns’ soul to song.

These sweet lines could never have been written of any but a simple country lass, whose natural charms had moved a susceptible human heart:

I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair;
I hear her in the tunefu’ birds,
I hear her charm the air;

There’s not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green,
There’s not a bonnie bird that sings,
But minds me o’ my Jean.

Who was this Burns that sang these sweet songs and whose musical soul was stirred by every breeze and moved to poetry by every lovely face and form that came within his view? Biographers and critics and admirers have praised the genius and begged excuses for the man. Without asking charity for this illustrious singer, let us view him in the light of justice, exactly as he was. It is not difficult to understand the character of Robert Burns. His heart was generous and warm and kind; his mind was open as the day, and his soul was sensitive to every breath that stirred the air. These qualities have made the poet loved in every land on earth, and brought more pilgrims to his grave than were ever drawn to the tomb of any other poet or author that has ever lived and died. And yet the short-sighted, carping, moralizing world, with solemn voice and wisdom ill-assumed, has ever told how much better and holier he could have been and should have been. Poor, silly, idle world, can you never learn that the qualities that make us strong must also make us weak; that the heart that melts at suffering and pain is made of clay so sensitive and fine as to be moved and swayed by all the emotions of the soul? Would you serve the weak, the suffering and the poor—would you calm their fears and dry their eyes and feel with them the cruel woes of life—you must wear your heart upon your sleeve, and then of course the daws will peck it into bits. Would you keep it safely hidden from the daws, you must hide it in a breast of stone or ice and keep it only for yourself. Perhaps we may admire the man that walks with steady step along a straight and narrow path, unmoved by all the world outside. He never feels and never errs. But we cannot ask of either man the virtues that belong to both, and when our choice is made we must take the strength and weakness too.

We look at the mountain top, lifting its snow-crowned head high into the everlasting blue, and are moved with wonder and with awe. Above is the endless sky; below, the world with all its bickering and strife, the clouds, the lightning and the storm, but the mountain, cold, impassive, changeless, unmoved by all the world, looks ever upward to the eternal heavens above. Again we gaze on the peaceful, fertile lowlands, rich with their generous harvests yet unborn—beautiful with their winding streams and grassy fields, ever ready to bestow bounteously on all that ask, demanding little and lavishly returning all; and we love the quiet, rustic, generous beauty of the scene. The mountain is majestic and sublime, and the yielding, generous lowlands are beautiful and pleasing too. We love them both, but we cannot have them both at once and both in one.

Robert Burns, and all men like him that ever lived, were always giving from their generous souls. In the cold judgment of the world, Burns wasted many a gem upon the thoughtless, worthless crowd, who consumed a life he should have spent for nobler things. But the flower that never wastes its fragrance has no perfume to give out. If it is truly sweet, its strength is borne away on every idle wind that blows. Robert Burns with lavish bounty shed his life and fragrance on every soul he met. He loved them all and loved them well: his sensitive, harmonious soul vibrated to every touch, and moved in perfect harmony with every heart that came within his reach. The lives of men like him are one long harmony; but as they pass along the stage of life, they leave a trail of disappointed hopes, and broken hearts, and vain regrets. But of all the tragedies great and small that mark their path, the greatest far and most pathetic is the sad and hopeless wreck that ever surely falls upon the exhausted artist’s life.

The life of Burns was filled with wrecks—with promises made and broken, with hopes aroused, and then dashed to earth again. It was filled with these because one man cannot give himself personally to all the world. The vices of Robert Burns perhaps like those of all the rest that ever lived, were virtues carried to excess. Of course, the world could not understand it then, and cannot understand it now, and perhaps it never will, for slander and malice and envy, like death, always love a shinning mark. The life of Burns and the life of each is the old Greek fable told again. Achilles’ mother would make him invulnerable by dipping him in the river Styx. She held him by the heel, which remained unwashed and vulnerable, and finally brought him to his death. To whatever dizzy height we climb, and however invulnerable we seek to be, there still remains with all the untouched heel that binds us to the earth. And after all, this weak and human spot, is the truest bond of kinship that unites the world.

I look back at Robert Burns, at the poor human life that went out a hundred years ago, and study its works to know the man. I care not what his neighbors thought; I care not for the idle gossip of an idle hour. I know that his immortal songs were not born of his wondrous brain alone, but of the gentlest, trust, tenderest heart that ever felt another’s pain. I know full well that the love songs of Robert Burns could have come from no one else than Robert Burns. I know that even the Infinite could not have changed the man and left the songs. Burns, like all true poets, told us what he felt and saw, and it is not for me to ask excuses for this or that; but rather reverently to bow my head in the presence of this great memory, and thank the infinite source of life for blessing us with Robert Burns exactly as he was.

It is difficult to understand our own being; it is impossible to know our fellow man’s, but I have faith to think that all life is but a portion of one great inclusive power, and that all is good and none is bad. The true standard for judging Burns and all other men is given by Carlyle, and I cannot refrain from borrowing and adopting what he says:

“The world is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men; unjust on many grounds, of which this one may be stated as the substance: It decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes; and not positively but negatively, less on what is done right than on what is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a planet’s, its diameter the breadth of the solar system; or it may be a city hippodrome; nay, the circle of a ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of deflection only are measured; and it is assumed that the diameter of the ginhorse and that of the planet will yield the same ratio when compared with them! Here lies the root of many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burns, Swift, Rousseau, which one never listens to with approval. Granted, the ship comes into harbor with shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not been all-wise and all-powerful; but to know how blameworthy; tell us first whether his voyage has been around the Globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs.”

Robert Burns has been dust for a hundred years, and yet the world knows him better now than the neighbors that lived beside his door. I look back upon the little village of Dumfries,—not the first or the last town that entertained angels unawares. I see poor Robert Burns passing down the street, and the pharisees and self-righteous walking on the other side. The bill of indictment brought against him by the Dumfries community was long and black; he was intemperate, immoral, irreligious, and disloyal to the things that were. The first two would doubtless have been forgiven, but the others could not be condoned. And so this illustrious man walked an outcast through the town that to-day makes its proudest boast that it holds the ashes of the mighty dead, who in life was surrounded by such a halo of glory that his neighbors could not see his face.

A hundred years ago Scotland was held tightly in the grasp of the Presbyterian faith. Calvinism is not very attractive even now, especially to us that live and expect to die outside its fold, but even Calvinism has softened and changed in a hundred years. Burns was too religious to believe in the Presbyterian faith, and to the Scotch Covenanter there was no religion outside the Calvinistic creed. How any man can read the poetry of Robert Burns and not feel the deep religious spirit that animates its lines is more than I can see. True, he ridicules the dogmas and the creeds that held the humanity and intellect of Scotland in its paralyzing grasp; but creeds and dogmas are the work of man; they come and go; are born and die; serve their time and pass away; but the love of humanity, the instincts of charity and tenderness, the deep reverence felt in the presence of the infinite mystery and power that pervade the universe, these, the basis of all the religions of the earth, remain forever, while creeds and dogmas crumble to the dust.

Scotland of a hundred years ago measured Burns’ religion by “Holy Willie’s Prayer,” “The Holy Fair,” and kindred songs. The world a hundred years from now will not make these the only test. Dumfries and all the Unco’ Guid of Scotland could not forgive Burns for writing:

O Thou wha in the heavens dost dwell,
Wha, as it pleases best thysel’,
Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell,
A’ for thy glory,
And no for ony guid or ill
They’ve done afore thee!

I bless and praise thy matchless might,
When thousands thou hast left in night,
That I am here afore thy sight,
For gifts an, grace,
A burnin, an a shinin’ light,
To a’ this place.

Lord, hear my earnest cry an’ pray’r,
Against that presbt’ry o’ Ayr;
Thy strong right hand, Lord make it bare
Upo’ their heads!
Lord, weigh it down, an’ dinna spare,
For their misdeeds.

But, Lord, remember me and mine
Wi’ mercies temp’ral and divine,
That I for gear and grace may shine,
Excell’d by name;
And a the glory shall be thine,
Amen, Amen.

It was not enough that Robert Burns taught a religion as pure and gentle and loving as that proclaimed by the Nazarene himself. Its meaning and beauty and charity were lost on those who would not see. Long ago it was written down that, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” If this is any test of a religious life, then few men will stand as high in the great beyond as Robert Burns. This poor poet has melted more hearts to pity and moved more souls to mercy, and inclined more lives to charity than any other poet that ever dreamed and sung. Not men and women and children alone were the objects of his bounteous love and tender heart, but he felt the pain of the bird, the hare, the mouse, and even the daisy whose roots were upturned to the biting blast. Hear him sing of the poor bird for whom he shudders at the winter’s cold:

Ilka hopping bird, we helpless thing
That in the merry month o’ spring
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o’ thee!
Where wilt thou cow’r thy chilling wing
And close thy ee?

Few men that ever lived would stop and lament with Burns, as he shattered the poor clay home of the field mouse with his plough. No matter what he did; no matter what he said; no matter what his creed; the man that wrote these lines deserves a place with the best and purest of this world or any other that the Universe may hold.

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie!
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin’ brattle;
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring prattle?

In a world which still enjoys the brutal chase, where even clergymen find pleasure in inflicting pain with the inhuman gun and rod, these lines written a hundred years ago, on seeing a wounded hare limp by, should place Burns amongst the blessed of the earth:

Inhuman man! curse on thy barb’rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye;
May never pity sooth thee with a sight,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!

* * * * * *

Oft, as by winding Nith I musing wait.
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,
I’ll miss thee sporting o’er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian’s aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.

This was Robert Burns,—and yet Dumfries, which held this gentle soul within its walls, and the Protestant world of a hundred years ago, looked at John Calvin piling the faggots around Servetus’ form, and knelt before him as a patron, religious saint, while they cast into outer darkness poor Robert Burns with his heart bowed down at the suffering of a wounded hare.

Will the world ever learn what true religion is? Will it ever learn that mercy and pity and charity are more in the sight of the Infinite than all the creeds and dogmas of the earth? Will it ever learn to believe this beautiful verse of Robert Burns:

But deep this truth impressed my mind,
Through all his works abroad;
The heart benevolent and kind,
The most resembles God.

Will the world ever learn when it prays to pray with Robert Burns, as man has seldom spoken to the Infinite, in whose unknown hands, we are as bubbles on the sea; to the great power, which sends us forth into the darkness to stagger through a tangled maze for a little time and then calls us back to sleep within its all-embracing heart.

O thou, unknown, Almighty Cause
Of all my hope and fear!
In whose dread presence, ere an hour,
Perhaps I must appear!

If I have wandered in those paths
Of life I ought to shun;—
As something loudly in my breast
Remonstrates I have done;—

Thou know’st that Thou hast formed me
With passion wild and strong;
And list’ning to their witching voice
Has often led me wrong.

Where human weakness has come short,
Or frailty step aside,
Do thou, All Good?—for such thou art
In shades of darkness hide.

Where with intention I have err’d,
No other plea I have
But, Thou art good! and goodness still
Delighteth to forgive!

Dear Robert Burns, to place one flower upon your grave, or add one garland to your fame is a privilege indeed. A noble man you were, knighted not by King or Queen, but titled by the Infinite Maker of us all. You loved the world; you loved all life; you were gentle, kind and true. Your works, your words, your deeds, will live and shine to teach the brotherhood of man, the kinship of all breathing things, and make the world a brighter, gentler, kindlier place because you lived and loved and sung.

REALISM
IN · LITERATURE
AND · ART

Clyx.com