Burns and the Commonplace

From "Thoughts of a Toiler" by W. Hunter

Read by Frederick W. Lehmann at the meeting of the Burns Club of St. Louis, January 25, 1917

WHATEVER else contributes to our growing estimation

of Robert Burns, whether it be his outspoken condemnation of hypocritical action or his inimitable lays of love, there exists no dubiety as to the real source of his popularity. The most superficial observer cannot fail to notice that the secret of his power breathes itself out in his rapturous expression on the simpler things of life. Whilst other gifted children of the Muse have floated on the wings of inspiration far up and beyond the trivialities of earthly existence, and wandered in a fairyland of rich imagination and fancy, the cotter of Ayrshire confined himself to a lowlier range of vision, which included all that had a bearing on the lives of struggling humanity. He never sought to withdraw his gaze from the scenes he witnessed around him, but on the contrary actually stopped to apply his transforming touch to the hitherto despised and unnoticed creations of Nature.

No form of life, either plant or animal, was too insignificant to merit the breath of his genius. In this respect he proved himself more true to nature than any poet who ever sang. It requires no great stretch of imagination to feel that within the soul of Robert Burns there existed a holy alliance between a tender sensitiveness and a reverent love for the humblest and most unassuming of earthly things. Who beside him ever dreamt of giving utterance to such divine eloquence on so common and unheeded an object as the "wee, modest crimson-tipper flower?" To no one else but him did the daisy appeal successfully for recognition. Its fate had always been to meet with nothing but an occasional passing glance, and to be ruthlessly trampled underfoot; to be esteemed but the plaything of children, and of no value whatever to men and women fighting the battle of existence. But to Burns the handiwork of the Divine was as beautifully expressed and as apparent in the simple beauty of this tiny flower of the field as in the most stupendous and awe-inspiring of his works.

How faithfully he has described the “early humble birth" of the "bonny gem," and told how "cheerfully it glinted forth

amid the storm!" And with what kindly grace he spoke of its unsheltered situation:

"The flaunting flowers our gardens yield

High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield,
But thou, beneath the random bield

O' clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble-field

Unseen, alane."

Then from the manner of its untimely death he drew the melancholy moral of such a similar fate overtaking the “artless maid" or the "simple bard."

Again, our poet became inspired on the notable occasion when his servant Blane so far forgot himself as to set out to kill the "wee, sleekit, courin', tim'rous beastie," which had been so unceremoniously turned out of its "wee bit housie." How freely his sympathy ran out to the startled "mousie" whom he designated as his "poor earth-born companion and fellow-mortal." His poetic utterance glorified the simple theme of his musing, and therein Burns accomplished the real mission of his genius in directing the sympathy of men into the same channel as his own. In so doing he served the double purpose of attracting human interest to the smaller and less understood affairs of life, and also endearing himself to the toiling masses of his countrymen. And like a true poet he utilized the occasion to give expression to a truism brought home to us with unerring certainty:

"The best-laid schemes o' mice and men

Gang aft a-gley,

And lea'e us nought but grief and pain
For promised joy."

The poet gave way to a still more remarkable outburst of feeling at the sight of the wounded hare, which managed to "hirple" past him after being shot by a neighbor of his own. In a fit of anger he went so far as to threaten to throw Thomson into the burn. He cursed the "barbrous act" which brought the career of the swift-footed "wanderer of the wood and field" to such a painful end.

Such leal-hearted sympathy with the distressed and suffering in the humbler spheres of life betokened the presence of intense interest in the lives of the homely and hardy peasantry with whom he was most closely associated. The heart which could feel a pang of pity for the misery and wretchedness of the meaner animal creation was bound to

give fitting response to the yearnings of the oppressed human family. And so it proved. Burns entered fully into the mode and manner of their living, cast a halo of brightness around their rustic joys and pleasures, and brought into bold relief the hardships and privations of their lives.

Not only so, but through the exertion of his powerful genius and personality he raised the people to their proper level and placed them on an equal social footing with the peer and the prince. He recognized neither rank nor position, class nor distinction:

"The rank is but the guinea stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that."

Thus in the grandest possible sense Burns glorified the commonplace as exemplified in the lower forms of creation and in the lowly lives of the Scottish peasantry. His greater productions "Tam o' Shanter," "The Cotter's Saturday Night,” and “Hallowe'en," are epitomes of the national life and character portraying on the one hand the saintly devotion, and on the other the superstitious spirit which pervaded the lives of the people. His touch transfigured the hitherto dull and obscure environment in which they lived and died. Fresh beauties were discovered in the life of the nation. The despised and down-trodden toilers of the byre and the hayfield were suddenly found to possess the truest dignity of manhood and all the grace and charm of feminine witchery. The revelation ennobled the class from which the poet sprang. In return they have showered upon him the wealth of their adoration, and today, after a lapse of a century and a half from the date of his birth, he finds an immortal abiding place, enshrined in the hearts of the people.

For ages Nature sought a voice
To make the soul of man rejoice;
To lure him back to taste the springs

Of purest joy in simple things.
At length she found a son of toil,
"Oor Rabbie," tiller of the soil,
At once she set his heart on fire,
Then smiled when he took up his lyre,
Full well she knew his song sublime
Would vibrate till the end of time.
And year by year the world acclaim

His matchless worth and deathless fame.

The Muse of Burns

By Irvin Mattick

January 25, 1917

'Twas winter, and the fields of Ayr
Like painted seas rolled still and bare,
And from the hills the boreal wrath
Made eddies in the snowy path

Where all the milkwhite hawthorn slept,
Where all the tiny rivers crept,

Or parent streams in anger tore
Along their ice-bound, jagged shore!
Upon the patient, pregnant dell
Snowflakes like spirit petals fell,
Clothing the naked shrubs and trees
In robes of spectral tapestries;
When in the chariot of the storm
There rode a lustrous spirit form,
Bearing a faint song's magic strain
In all the wonder of its train!
The vision was no Attic shape,
Wearing a huge decorous cape,
But seemed some Naiad of the air
With graceful arms and bosom bare;
Who stepped with pretty twinkling feet,
Who smiled with amorous kindness sweet,
Whose glowing eye betrayed the mind
That loved the whole of humankind!
Above an honest plowman's hut,
Whose dearest wealth was one pure cot,
The muse of Scotland's matchless song
"Twixt life and death despairing hung:
The wind now ceased its weary drone,

Through drifting clouds the starlight shone,
And o'er the frozen field and hill

The winter world grew deathly still:

When suddenly an infant's cry

Rose to the spirit maid on high,

Who gathered in Scotland's noblest hour

The ebbing vestige of her power,

And dropped from heaven with graceful turns Into the heart of Robert Burns!

O Burns, I wonder if you knew
That God a task had given you,
When into your warm human heart
He cast Truth's sharp poetic dart;
That stung your spirit into song,
That made you suffer woe and wrong,
That made you laugh and weep and jest
Until your over-flowing breast

Poured all its pity and its mirth
Upon the great and humble of the earth.
Ah, when the fair dame Poesy,
Among her sisters set you free,
She never left you quite alone,
But stayed, a careless chaperone:
Perhaps she grew so fond of how
You praised each lassie's bonnie brow,
That she preferred to let you rove
Unfettered through the realms of love!
She must have loved you for the way
You healed the plight of Duncan Gray,

And when you stopped between your plowing,

Great glory on a mouse bestowing.

She must have looked with moistened eye

Upon your kindred misery.

When for the rights of love and hate

The Twa Dogs held their high debate,
Perhaps she yearned to taste the change
Of living in a lower range.

And when upon that glorious morn
The diadem of tales was born,
Were you the one who bowed and said
That pleasures were like poppies spread?
Were you the one who took his hand
And led him to the Nith's green strand,
Within whose waters he could read
The racing mettle of Meg's speed?
And when beside the new-mown stack
He lounged upon a weary back,

And gazed at that pure lingering star,
Did you transport his soul afar,
Into those realms of silence, where
He brooded oft with miser care?

* * * * * *

You were the truest friend he had:
Whether his soul was bright or sad,-
You came with gentle hands and pressed