yes, we are proud, and have a right to be, of the "lad that was born in Kyle." "A man's a man for a' that" was the coming prophecy of the great brotherhood of the world, and it is to-day the tie of our social life, the very bond of fraternity which Robert Burns so well expressed. I do not think that Wordsworth could have written so sweetly, I do not believe Carlyle could have hated the wrong SO thoroughly, if your poet had not lived. I come to you from the country across the sea to speak of the love we have for Burns-for he is our national poet also: he is the one man who expresses the glow and fervour and enthusiasm of our people there. "Will you go to the Indies, my Mary?" has been singularly and happily answered. What a beautiful forecast of his own poetic destiny! How his lines to Mary and Bonnie Jean outspeed the morning, and float on wings of music beyond "the farthest Ind"! He is indeed the bard of Scotland, the skylark poet of Britain, the prophet of America, with ringing words of freedom and manhood! Could he have had a vision as he lay upon his dying bed that, before one hundred years went by, the narrow fringe of colonial civilisation would expand to seventy millions, speaking one common language; and also foreseen that although the world might widen it would not outgrow his song,-how it would have cheered his heart! Did not the vision pass before him, for he was conscious of the power that slumbered in him? I believe it did. And now, to-night, the world comes together to give the Memory of Robert Burns, which I ask you to pledge in solemn silence. This poem on the Ettrick Shepherd was written at the request of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning, on my return from a trip up the Yarrow to St Mary's Loch. Tibbie Shiel's Inn was all the dearer to me as Poet-Laureate of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning, because here foregathered on many a night James Hogg and Christopher North, poetic links connecting the present and the past. |