Burns (Whittier, poem)

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM

No more these simple flowers belong

To Scottish maid and lover;

Sown in the common soil of song,

They bloom the wide world over.

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,

The minstrel and the heather,

The deathless singer and the flowers

He sang of five together.

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!

The moorland flower and peasant!

How, at their mention, memory turns

Her pages old and pleasant!

The gray sky wears again its gold

And purple of adorning,

And manhood's noonday shadows hold

The dews of boyhood's morning.

The dews that washed the dust and soil

From off the wings of pleasure,

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil

With golden threads of leisure.

I call to mind the summer day,

The early harvest mowing,

The sky with sun and clouds at play,

And flowers with breezes blowing.

I hear the blackbird in the corn,

The locust in the haying;

And, like the fabled hunter's horn,

Old tunes my heart is playing.

How oft that day, with fond delay,

I sought the maple's shadow,

And sang with Burns the hours away,

Forgetful of the meadow!

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead

I heard the squirrels leaping;

The good dog listened while I read,

And wagged his tail in keeping.

I watched him while in sportive mood

I read "The Two Dogs" story,

And half believed he understood

The poet's allegory.

Sweet day, sweet songs!--The golden hours

Grew brighter for that singing,

From brook and bird and meadow flowers

A dearer welcome bringing.

New light on home-seen Nature beamed,

New glory over Woman;

And daily life and duty seemed

No longer poor and common.

I woke to find the simple truth

Of fact and feeling better

Than all the dreams that held my youth

A still repining debtor:

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,

The themes of sweet discoursing;

The tender idyls of the heart

In every tongue rehearsing.

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,

Of loving knight and lady,

When farmer boy and barefoot girl

Were wandering there already?

I saw through all familiar things

The romance underlying;

The joys and griefs that plume the wings

Of Fancy skyward flying.

I saw the same blithe day return,

The same sweet fall of even,

That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,

And sank on crystal Devon.

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills

The sweet-brier and the clover;

With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,

Their wood-hymns chanting over.

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,

I saw the Man uprising;

No longer common or unclean

The child of God's baptizing!

With clearer eyes I saw the worth

Of life among the lowly;

The Bible at his Cotter's hearth

Had made my own more holy.

And if at times an evil strain,

To lawless love appealing,

Broke in upon the sweet refrain

Of pure and healthful feeling,

It died upon the eye and ear,

No inward answer gaining;

No heart had I to see or hear

The discord and the staining.

Let those who never erred forget

His worth, in vain bewailings;

Sweet Soul of Song!--I own my debt

Uncancelled by his failings!

Lament who will the ribald line

Which tells his lapse from duty,

How kissed the maddening lips of wine

Or wanton ones of beauty;

But think, while falls that shade between

The erring one and Heaven,

That he who loved like Magdalen,

Like her may be forgiven.

Not his the song whose thunderous chime

Eternal echoes render,--

The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,

And Milton's starry splendor!

But who his human heart has laid

To Nature's bosom nearer?

Who sweetened toil like him, or paid

To love a tribute dearer?

Through all his tuneful art, how strong

The human feeling gushes!

The very moonlight of his song

Is warm with smiles and blushes!

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,

So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;

Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,

But spare his Highland Mary